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LETTERS 

T O 

A YOUNG LADY 

ON A 

COURSE 

OF 

ENGLISH POETRY. 

BY J. AIKIN, M. D. 



Hail, ye mighty masters of the lay, 

Nature's true sons, the friends of man and truth, 
Whose song, sublimely sweet, serenely gay, 
Amused my childhood, and inform'd my youth: 
For well I know, wherever ye reside, 
There harmony, and peace, and innocence abide. 

Minstrel. 



SECOND EDITION. 
LONDON : 

PRINTED FOR 

j. johnson, st. Paul's church-yard, 

BY RICHARD TAYLOR AND CO., SHOE-LAN E. 

. ISO/. 



-<M 



' Herbert Pelf 
March 1 



PR 50 1 
fa 




CONTENTS. 



LETTER I. - - p. i. 

The design proposed. Objection to poetry as 
too conversant with the passion of love — con- 
sidered. Nature of verse, and pleasure uni- 
versally derived from it. 

LETTER II. - - p. (). 

The first object, to habituate the ear to the me- 
lody of verse. Pope's Pastorals: heroic mea- 
sure described. Windsor Forest. Ode for 
St. Cecilia's Day : music of poetry, Choruses 
to Brutus. Elegy lo the Memory of an Un- 
fortunate Lady. Temple of Fame. Fable of 
.Dryope: Vertumnus and Pomona. 

LETTER 



VI CONTENTS. 

LETTER III. - - p. 20. 

Dryden, his characteristics. Fables : Knights* 
Tale: Cock and Fox: Flower and Leaf: Good 
Parson : Theodore and Honoria : Cymon and 
Iphigenia. Alexander's Feast. 

LETTER IV. - - p. 31. 

Waller : Amoret and Saccharissa : Panegyric on 
Cromwell: Phoebus and Daphne. Prior: Hen- 
ry and Emma : Solomon : Smaller pieces : 
Songs, Ballads, &c. 

LETTER V. - - p. 43. 

Addison: Campaign : Letter from Italy : Poem 
to Kneller: Hymns: Translations. Parnell 
Hesiod, or the Rise of Woman : Fairy Tale 
Allegory on Man : Night-piece on Death 
Hermit : Battle of Frogs and Mice. Gay 
Rural Sports : Trivia : The Fan : Shep 
herd's Week 5 remarks on Pastoral : Ballads 
Fables. 

LETTER 



CONTEXTS. VH 



LETTER VI. - - p. 62. 

Swift ; character of Familiar Poetiy : Cadenus 
and Vanessa : Poems to Stella : Journal of a 
Modern Lady: The Grand Question debated : 
Mrs. Harris's Petition : Baucis and Philemon : 
Imitations of Horace : Verses on his own 
Death. 

LETTER VII. - - p. 77. 

Return to Pope : Translation of Homers Iliad 
and Odyssey : Eloisa to Abelard : Rape of 
the Lock ; mock heroic 3 unworthy treat- 
ment of rhe female sex : Essay on Criticism: 
Essay on Man : Moral Essays : Imitations of 
Horace : Satires : Dunciad : Prologue to 
Cato. 

LETTER VIII. - p. 103. 

Young, his character as a satirist: Love of 
Fame : Paraphrase on Job. Elegiac measure; 
Hammond's Love-Elegies. 

LETTER 



Ylll CONTENTS. 



LETTER IX. - - p. 13 3. 

On Blank Verse j compared with Rhyme. Mil- 
ton : Mask of Com us : Allegro and Pensero- 
so : Lycidas. 

LETTER X. - - p. 12/. 
Paradise Lost : Paradise Regained : Samson Ago- 



nistes. 



LETTER XL - - p. 142. 



Imitators of Milton. J.Philips: Splendid Shil- 
ling : On Didactic Poetry : Cyder. Arm- 
strong : Art of Preserving Health. Dyer: 
Fleece: Grongar Hill : Ruins of Rome. 



LETTER XII. - - p. 159. 

Akenside: Pleasures of the Imagination: Hymn 
to the Naiads: Inscriptions. Thomson: Sea- 
sons: Liberty, &c. 

LETTER 



CONTENTS. IX 

LETTER XIII. - - p. 173. 
Somerville's Chace. Young's Night Thoughts. 

LETTER XIV. - - p. 1S4. 

Return to Rhyme. Gray: Ode to Spring : Pro- 
spect of Eton College : Hymn to Adversity : 
Fatal Sisters: Pindaric Odes: Progress of 
Poesy : Bard : Elegy in a Country Church- 
yard : Fragments. Mason : his Odes : Ele- 
gies. 

LETTER XV. - - p. 199. 

Collins : his Eclogues : Odes. Akenside's Odes. 
Smollett's Ode to Independence. Laureate 
Odes. 

LETTER XVI. - - p. 210. 

Allegorical Poetry : Spenser's Faery Queen. 
Imitations of Spenser: Thomson's Castle of 
Indolence. Shenstone's School-mistress. 

LETTER 



X CONTENTS. 

LETTER XVII, - - p. 228. 

The Witty Poets. Cowley. Butler's Hudibras. 
Green. 

LETTER XVIII. - - p. 247. 

Poets taken without classifying. Want of judg- 
ment in the collections. Tickell. Garth. Con- 
greve. Rowe. E. Moore's Fables. Lyttelton. 
Shenstone. 

LETTER XIX. - - p. 264. 
Goldsmith. Johnson. 



LETTER XX. - - p. 2T9. 

Beattie's Minstrel. Cowper. H. Moore. Con- 
clusion. 



LET- 



LETTERS 

ON 

A COURSE 

OF 

ENGLISH POETRY. 



LETTER I. 



MY DEAR MARY, 

W hen I congratulated you on the elegant 
present you had received of a set of tlie 
English Poets, I did not foresee that I was 
laying myself open to a resquest on your 
part of no trifling extent. You desire that 
u I would instruct you in the most profit- 
able use of a treasure which I have repre- 
sented as so valuable. " I cannot affirm 
cither that the wish itself is unreasonable ; 
or that your claim upon me to gratify it, 
as far as I am able, is in any respect defec- 
tive. The tie of ailection and kindred is 
b strong 



2 LETTER I. 

strong enough to bear the injunction of a 
task much less agreeable to my taste than 
this will be; though the time it will occupy 
is a consideration of some moment. For, 
in a cursory way to give you my opinion 
on the merits of our principal poets, would 
be very imperfectly fulfilling the purpose 
of your request ; which comprehends, as I 
understand it, such directions for a course 
of poetical reading, as may best conduce 
to the forming of your taste and cultivating 
your understanding. 

These are the objects which I shall at- 
tempt to attain ; and as this cannot be effect- 
ed in the compass of two or three sheets, you 
must patiently prepare yourself for the 
perusal of a series of letters, which may 
amount altogether to a moderate sized 
volume : so, you see that the task you 
have imposed upon me recoils with no 
small weight upon yourself. I shall not, 
however, increase the burthen by any grave 
lectures upon the moral use of poetry. I 
take it for granted that you are already well 

grounded 



INTRODUCTORY. 3 

grounded in the principles of morality, and 
therefore may be trusted to extract what is 
most valuable from a set of authors who, 
in general, are friends to virtue and deco- 
rum, while you pass lightly and unhurt over 
the dubious matter which may be mingled 
with the rest. Yet I shall not neglect to 
point out to you, as we pass, such works 
and passages as you may dwell upon with 
most advantage to your moral as well as 
to your literary taste; and, on the other 
hand, shall suppress in merited oblivion 
all such pieces as appear entirely unfit for 
your perusal. 

There is one particular topic, however, 
concerning which I feel a degree of hesita- 
tion. Poetry has in all ages and countries 
been the servant and interpreter of love : 
from that passion it has received some of 
its most rapturous inspiration, and to its 
interests has devoted its choicest powers. 
The strains of love are not only occasion- 
ally met with in the works of the poets : 
they are the animating soul of many, and 
are intimately blended with almost all. Is 

thru; 



4 LETTER I. 

there not danger, then, in lending to an 
affection already, perhaps, too seductive to 
a young and susceptible mind, the auxi- 
liary allurements of eloquence and har- 
mony ? I Mill not affirm that such danger 
is altogether imaginary ; but, in my opi- 
nion, love in poetry is a more harmless 
thing than love in prose. The more of 
fancy is mixed with it — the more it is re- 
moved from common life — the less is its 
influence over the heart and the conduct ; 
and it is probable that the refinement and 
elevation of sentiment fostered by a taste 
for poetry may prove a- protection from 
that light and vulgar passion which enters 
merely at the eyes, and is too sensual to 
be disgusted with coarseness and stupidity. 
8ince, then, it is impossible to separate love 
from poetry, I shall not fear to recom- 
mend it to your notice in its purest, most 
tejider, and fanciful form. Poets them- 
selves, who have written upon it all their 
lives, have very soberly felt its influence. 

As it will be my plan to aim at forming 
your taste by practice only, that is, by fa- 
miliarising 



INTRODUCTORY. 5 

militarising you with the perusal of the best 
models, I shall also spare you the tedious- 
ness of any preliminary discussions of the 
theoretical kind concerning the abstract 
nature of poetry in general, and its several 
species. Opportunities will be oflered, as 
we proceed, of making some remarks on 
these points, with the advantage of imme- 
diate illustration by examples ; the sole mode 
in which they can be rendered interesting. 
It is enough if you set out with the persua- 
sion, that there is something in the mea- 
sured succession of sounds called verse, 
which has in all nations and languages been 
found agreeable to the ear, and a means of 
impressing the sense of words upon the 
mind with peculiar force and sweetness. 
To assist you in acquiring an ear for the 
melody of verse, will therefore be the first 
object of my directions : but I reserve un- 
practical commencement for a second letter: 
and in the meantime remain, 

Yours very affectionately, 

J. A. 



C 6 3 

LETTER II. 



MY DEAR PUPIL, 



As it is my wish as soon as possible to 
habituate your ear to the melody of versi- 
fication, I shall totally disregard the chro- 
nological order in which the productions 
of English poetry have made their appear- 
ance, and at once introduce you to those 
perfect examples of the art, which ne- 
cessarily imply many previous attempts. 
The poet, therefore, whom I shall first re- 
commend to your notice is the correct and 
harmonious Pope, the master of the mo- 
dern school of English versifiers ; and I 
shall initiate you by the perusal of those of 
his works which will least occupy your at- 
tention on any other account than the mu- 
sic of their strains. 

His "Pastorals" were a production of his 
early youth, formed upon models left us 
by the antients, and aspiring to little more 

than 



POPE. 7 

than the praise of elegant imitation. In 
many respects they show the immature age 
of the writer, but not in their versifica- 
tion, which possesses a degree of excellence 
scarcely surpassed by himself in his ma- 
ture performances. The measure is of the 
kind termed heroic, as being principally 
employed upon grave and elevated topics. 
In its most regular form, it consists often 
syllables, alternately short and long, con- 
stituting what in Greek and Latin poetry 
are called Iambic feet. You will perceive 
that the voice in general lays a light stress 
upon every other syllable, which produces 
a sort of undulating motion in the whole, 
resembling the flow of waves. This is a 
very simple melody, yet, when well ma- 
naged, is sufficiently agreeable. I question 
not that you will immediately feel the sweet- 
ness of verses like these : 

Go, gentle gales, and bear my sighs along ! 
The birds shall cease to tune their evening song, 
The winds to breathe, the waving woods to move, 
And streams to murmur, ere I cease to love. 

These Pastorals contain a great many 

pretty 



8 LETTER II. 

pretty lines, a general elegance and splen- 
dour of diction, but very little original 
imagery. It is remarkable that a young 
poet, brought up in a rural retreat, should 
have viewed nature so little with his own 
eyes. But he was a very early student of 
poetry, and imitation took place in him of 
observation. He had, however, the good 
taste to make a selection of the most pleas- 
ing images; and the objects he paints, 
though common, are represented with truth 
and beauty. The bright touches of a poe- 
tical pencil are conspicuous in the follow- 
ing lines: 

Where dancing sun-beams on the waters play'd, 
And verdant alders formed a quivering sJiade. 

Here you see, superadded to the melody 
of numbers, that choice of appropriate 
circumstances which gives life and anima- 
tion to description, and which is one of 
the essential qualities of poetry, though it 
also belongs to good writing in general. 

The last of these pieces, the sacred ec- 
logue of u Messiah," will doubtless strike 

you 



• POPE. 9 

you as written in a more lofty strain than 
the rest. In fact, it deserts the scenery 
and sentiment proper to pastoral, and bor- 
rows its imagery and language from the 
sublime conceptions of the Hebrew bards. 
It was, indeed, a noble foretaste of what 
the young poet was destined to be, and 
showed that grandeur was not less his cha- 
racteristic than elegance. It has been ob- 
jected to Pope's versification, that he too 
uniformly concludes a sentence, or at least 
a clause, within the limits of a couplet, so 
that the stop regularly falls upon the second 
rhyming word. It is perhaps right that 
this should be the common structure of 
rhymed heroics, since it gives the clearest 
perception of the measure ; yet to break it 
occasionally and with judgment, relieves 
the ear from a tiresome monotony. Of 
this a happy example is afforded in the fol- 
lowing passage of the Messiah : 

But lost, dissolv'd in thy superior rays, 
One tide of glory, one unclouded blaze 
Overflow thy courts. 

This 



10 LETTER -II. 

This overflow of the measure is not only 
agreeable to the ear, but has a sort of cor- 
respondence with the sense. 

" Windsor Forest/' another juvenile pro- 
duction of this writer, bears no mean rank 
among descriptive poems. There is less of 
local scenery in the description than might 
have been expected from one who passed 
much of his youth within the purlieus of 
the forest ; and the subjects are chiefly 
drawn from rural life in general, or from 
historic incidents. The pictures of coun- 
try sports, and the lively sketches of the 
animals which are the objects of them, 
never fail to give pleasure to a young 
reader. The latter part of the poem, how- 
ever, containing the personification and 
prediction of " old father Thames/' is in 
a strain greatly superior to the rest, and 
strongly marks the developement of the 
author's genius in the nine years which 
intervened between the composition of the 
two portions. It would be difficult from 
the whole range of descriptive poetry to 

produce 



POPE. 11 

produce a finer passage than that following 
the lines, 

The time shall come, when free as seas or wind 
Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind. 

The next piece inserted in the works of 
our poet comes opportunely to give you a 
taste of a new kind of composition, and 
new modes of versification. This is the 
" Ode for St. Cecilia's Day;" a poem in- 
tended to be set to. music, as were ori- 
ginally all those termed lyric, although at 
present they are frequently written without 
any such intention. They are all, how- 
ever, expected to contain a species of mu- 
sic in themselves ; that is, so to adapt the 
measure to the subject, as to accompany 
the changes of sense in the words, with 
correspondent changes of modulation in 
the verse. This music of poetry is reduci- 
ble to no determinate rules, and different 
ears form very different conclusions respect- 
ing it : indeed, it is possible for a skilful 
reader to give almost what expression he 

pleases 



12 LETTER II. 

pleases . to any combination of long and 
short syllables. Yet it is certain that some 
are naturally better suited than others to 
particular emotions of the mind ; and the 
opposite extremes of light and solemn, 
cheerful and plaintive, are capable of being 
marked with sufficient distinctness. 

How far the various melodies of verse 
can be made to coincide with the proper 
music of notes and tones, I confess myself 
unable to judge; but I cannot observe 
without disgust what effusions of nonsense 
and vulgarity are usually preferred by mu- 
sical composers as the vehicles of their 
finest airs. The musician probably wishes to 
have the words so pliant as to conform to 
all the changes of strain which the rules of 
his art may require; but poetry and sense 
are not of so accommodating a nature. 
Pope's Ode, I believe, never acquired fame 
as a musical performance : as an experi- 
ment in the art of versification, it certainly 
deserves attention. You will remark that 
it begins with an imitation of sounds alone. 

There 



POPE. IS 

There is danger in such an attempt, lest, by 
aiming to approach too near, sense should 
be too much neglected, and the words 
should catch an air of the burlesque. Thus 
a great poet has given " The double, dou- 
ble, double beat of the thnnd'ring drum." 
Pope, however, has avoided any thing so 
extravagant, and his first stanza seems to 
imitate very happily the music it describes. 
He proceeds to the imitation of action and 
sentiment, and the antient story of Orpheus 
and Eurydiceis the principal frame for ihe 
expression. The story has been better told 
by other poets ; for every thing is here made 
subservient to those changes of situation 
and passion which may display the writer's 
art in the adaptation of suitable measures. 
In some of these efforts he has been thought 
successful ; in others much the reverse : 
but I do not wish to prompt your judg- 
ment by the opinion of others. Read and 
feel for yourself. 

The two " Choruses for the Tragedy of 
Brutus" which follow, were also intended 
to be set to music. They are probably too 

replete 



14 LETTER II. 

replete with thought for this purpose ; but 
this is no objection to them, considered as 
poems to be read. They are very elegant 
pieces; and the touching picture of con- 
nubial love in the second of them deserves 
great praise as a moral painting. With 
respect to the peculiar structure of the stan- 
zas, and the application of the antique terms 
of chorus and semi-chorus, strophe and 
anti-strophe, I shall make no remarks at 
present. Lyrical poetry, to which they be- 
long, will be more fully considered here- 
after. 

I do not mean to lead you without in- 
termission through the works of this charm- 
ing author ; but in order to render your ear 
perfectly familiar with the tune, as it may be 
called, of his versification, I shall desire you 
not to lay him down till you have perused 
two or three more of his pieces in that 
measure of which he was tlic greatest mas- 
ter, the heroic. 

His " Elegy to the Memory of an unfor- 
tunate Lady" is a very finished composi- 
tion, and has, perhaps, mor? of the pathetic 

than 



POPE. 15 

than any thing he has written besides; for 
in that quality he does not abound. You 
will perceive a fine effect from that artifice 
of writing, the repetition of words particu- 
larly energetic, in the following lines : 

By foreign hands thy dying eyes were clos'd, 
By foreign hands thy decent limbs compos'd, 
By foreign hands thy humble grave adorn'd, 
By strangers honour'd, and by strangers mourn'd. 

Examples of that sententious brevity 
which peculiarly distinguished our poet, are 
found in this piece, which does not in the 
least partake of the character of feebleness 
usually imputed to elegy. No writer has 
made such advantage of the obligation im- 
posed by rhyme-couplets of comprising a 
sense within the limits of one or two verses : 
he has derived from it a nervous conciseness 
beyond the powers of prose, or blank verse. 
What can surpass the fulness and energy 
of meaning in such lines as these ? 

And curs'd with hearts unknowing how to yield. — 
Grieve for an hour, perhaps, then mourn a year. — 
'lis all thou art, and all the proud shall be. — 

7 It 



1G LETTER II. 

It is manifest that this kind of excellence 
cannot be attained without unremitting care 
and diligence ; and no man ever bestowed 
more of these upon his productions than 
Pope. 

The "Temple of Fame*' is a composi- 
tion of a very different kind. Poetry ap- 
pears in it drest in that garb of fiction 
which may be called its holiday suit, but 
which by some lias been represented as its 
proper and distinguishing h«bit. The wri- 
ter has here borrowed the invention of ail 
older poet; but he has so much improved 
the design, and filled it up with, so many 
beauties of his own growth, that his work 
may almost claim the merit of an original. 
The idea of the Temple of Fame is an alle- 
gorical fiction ; that is, a fable or story, 
formed upon the conversion of the abstract 
quality, Fame, into a person, and assign- 
ing her a local habitation, with attendants, 
votaries, and the like. Yon will hereafter 
find the poets abounding in such creations 
of the fancy, by which they gain the ad- 
vantage 



POPE. )7 

vantage of entertaining their readers with 
novelties — with things, as Milton expresses 
it, u beyond this visible diurnal sphere," 
which gratify the natural passion for won- 
der, and produce scenes of splendour and 
sublimity superior to those presented by 
mere reality. 

1 do not mean to trouble you with a com- 
mentary on this piece, which, in fact, is 
•less admirable for its allegorical justness, 
than for the particular beauties of its de- 
scription. In the latter respect, very few 
works of poetry surpass it ; and though it 
was a juvenile performance of the author's, 
it affords examples of his very best man- 
ner. You cannot pass over without ad- 
miration the simile of the ice-mountains, 
which presents a winter landscape of won- 
derful brilliancy : 

So Zembla's rocks, the beauteous work of frost, 
Rise white in air, and glitter o'er the coast ; 
Pale sun?, unfelt, at distance roll away, 
And on th J impassive ice the lightnings play. 

I know not whether you are sufficiently 
c advanced 



18 LETTER II. 

advanced in general reading to judge of the 
figures of heroes, philosophers, and poets, 
with which his temple is so nobly deco- 
rated ; but where you are acquainted with 
the characters, you will not fail of being 
struck with the spirit and justness of the 
portraitures. Homer, Virgil, and Pindar 
are drawn with singular force and skill. 
The conclusion of the piece, relative to his 
own views as a candidate for fame, is en- 
tirely his own, and moralizes with true 
dignity. 

If, in addition to the works above pointed 
out, you will read the two beautiful trans- 
lations from Ovid, " the Fable of Dryope," 
and u Vertumnus and Pomona," you will 
have acquired a full perception of the me- 
lody of versification, and the clearness and 
splendour of diction, which are some of 
the most essential qualities of fine poetry. 
And having gained this point, I think it 
advisable no longer to confine you to this 
one writer, lest, fascinated by his beauties, 
you fix your taste so exclusively upon him, 

as 



POPE. 19 

as to regard every deviation from his man- 
ner as a defect. You will therefore lay him 
down for the present, and in my next let- 
ter I will introduce you to one of his com- 
petitors in poetic fame. 

Farewell, &c. 



LETTER 



C 20 ] 

LETTER III. 

Pursuing my first idea of habituating you 
to the numbers and the language of poetry 
as exhibited in the best models, I now, my 
dear Mary, carry you back to one who is 
regarded as the master of Pope, and whom 
many think his superior. This is the ce- 
lebrated Dkyden, a name scarcely second 
to any among the English poets, and the 
fertile author of compositions, many of 
which, from an unfortunate choice of to- 
pics, are almost sunk into oblivion, or arc 
remembered chiefly by their titles. The 
seriousness of his temper, and strong party 
attachments, engaged him in political and 
religious controversy, and the necessities 
under which he laboured made him a venal 
trader in adulation. Hence he incurred a great 
waste of genius, and threw away upon tem- 
porary and unworthy topics, exertions which 
would have served to delight future ages. 

Of 



DHYDEN. 21 

Of the works which still attract the no- 
tice of readers of poetry, the principal are 
his " Fables ;" pieces formed upon the 
stories of early writers, and modernized 
with a free hand. Although these were 
composed at an advanced period of life, 
and indeed as a task for money, yet, such 
was the vigour of his genius, that they 
possess al{ the warmth of diction and facility 
of invention which distinguished his best 
days. The characteristics of Dryden are 
richness and freedom. His versification is 
much more varied than that of Pope. The 
p:uises in the lines are placed with less uni- 
formity; the sense of one line or couplet 
more frequently overflows to the next ; 
triplets, or three successive rhymes, are 
often introduced ; and alexandrines, or lines 
lengthened to twelve syllables, are scattered 
throughout. H is poetical diction or style 
partakes of a similar variety. It is some- 
times elevated and adorned with the most 
splendid figuifes ; but its habitual cast is that 
of energy and animation; supported by the 

free 



22 LETTER III. 

free use of common words, which, if strong 
and expressive, are not rejected on account 
of a degree of coarseness. It is therefore 
well fitted for narration ; and scarcely any 
poems of this class are to be found, which 
paint action and scenery on the reader's 
imagination in such lively colours as his 
Tales. It is, however, to be remarked, 
that no writer was ever less careful to pre- 
serve proprieties of manners and character 
than this poet, and that his violations of the 
costume surpass all allowable bounds. This 
defect, indeed, is in great part derived from 
the authors whom he paraphrased, who were 
chiefly those of a rude and tasteless age. 

The " Knight's Tale," or « Palamon and 
Arcite," taken from Chaucer, which I shall 
first recommend to your perusal, strangely 
attributes the manners of chivalry to the 
times and persons of remote classical anti- 
quity. But after the reader lias acquiesced 
in this leading incongruity, he cannot fail 
to receive much entertainment from the 
richness of the scenery and variety of the 

adventures ; 



DRYBEN. S3 

adventures ; and as a study in the poetical 
art, few pieces in the English language de- 
serve more attention. Dryden was versed 
in the learning of the schools, and was fond 
on all occasions of pouring forth his know- 
ledge upon abstruse and speculative points. 
You will therefore find, intermixed with 
the description and sentiment proper to the 
story, many allusions relative to astronomy, 
theology, metaphysics, and other branches 
of philosophy, which perhaps you may 
think tedious. But in proportion as you 
have acquired a taste for poetry, you will 
dwell with delight and admiration upon his 
creations of the fancy, some of which are 
equally bold in the conception, and vivid 
in the representation. The temples of Ve- 
nus and Mars are draughts of this kind, 
finely contrasted : the latter, especially, 
abounds with allegorical figures which, in 
the painter's phrase, perfectly start from 
the canvass. The purely narrative part of 
the tale flows easy and copious ; and though 
protracted with great variety of circum- 
stance, 



24 LETTER III. 

stance, keeps up the interest to the verj( 
conclusion. 

Of the other tales, " the Cock and the 
Fox" will entertain you by its description 
of familiar objects; but you will wonder to 
find so much reading and argumentation 
put into the mouths of barn-door fowl. 
Dryden, as well as some other writers, 
seems to have thought the character of that 
kind of fiction termed fable, sufficiently 
preserved, if the actions belong to the ani- 
mals which are the personages of the story, 
while the language and sentiments are those 
of human beings. It is true, supposing 
tiiem to converse at all, is giving them the 
principal attribute of man ; yet the most 
correct fabulists limit their discourse to the 
mere illustration of the moral intended to 
be exemplified, and make them as nearly 
as possible utter the sense of a bird or beast 
that should be inspired with the gift of 
language. Dryden's Cock and Hen have 
all the knowledge which he himself pos- 
sessed, and quote fathers and schoolmen 

just 



just as in his " Hind and Panther" (apiece 
which I do not recommend to you, not- 
withstanding its temporary fame) all the 
arguments in the controversy between pa- 
pists and protestants are inserted in a dia- 
logue between those two animals. He has 
contrived, however, in the present tale to 
make the absurdity sufficiently amusing,. 
and it has many lines worth remembering. 
The theory of the production of dreams 
has often been quoted : 

Dreams are but interludes which fancy makes : 
While monarch reason sleeps, this mimic wakes ; 
Compound's a medley of disjointed things, 
A mob of coblers, and a court of kings. 

The Vision entitled " The Flower and 
the Leaf" is not very interesting as an al- 
legory : it however contains much brilliant 
description. The picture of Spring with 
which it commences is uncommonly beau- 
tiful, and, upon a trite subject, is marked 
with the originality of genius. 

The u Character of a Good Parson" is 
an admirable piece of moral portraiture : 

piety 



26 LETTER III. 

piety and virtue have seldom been painted 
in a form more dignified and amiable. The 
allusion to the well-known fable of the sun, 
wind and traveller, is very ingenious and 
poetical. 

In his story of u Theodore and Honoria" 
the poet gives a specimen of his powers in 
the terrific. I shall not diminish the cu- 
riosity with which you will peruse this 
" tale of wonder" by anticipating its cir- 
cumstances ; but I would bespeak your 
attention to some lines which have been 
justly noted as containing one of the finest 
examples of the verse modulated to the 
subject. They are these : 

"Whilst listening to the murmuring leaves he stood, 

More than a mile immersVl within the wood, 

At once the wind was laid ; the whispering sound 

Was dumb $ a rising earthquake rock'd the ground ; 

With deeper brown the grove was overspread ; 

A sudden horror seized his giddy head, 

And his ears tinkled, and his colour fted» 



"} 



Your ear cannot fail to mark that skil- 
ful variation of the pauses, which makes 

the 



DRYDEW 27 

the reader feel, as it were, his breath sus- 
pended, in expectation of the coming scene. 
" Cymon and Iphigenia," an enter- 
taining story poetically related, may con- 
clude your progress through Dryden's Fa- 
bles. An example of his art of versifica- 
tion will probably strike you in this triplet : 



The fanning wind upon her bosom blows, 
To meet the fanning wind the bosom rose, 
The fanning wind and purling stream continue her 
repose. 



} 



A very elegant moral sentiment is con- 
tained in the following couplet : 

Love taught him shame ; and shame, with love at strife, 
Soon taught the sweet civilities of life. 

I reserve for you, before taking leave of 
this illustrious poet, that production of his 
which has obtained the greatest share of 
popularity , and is usually placed at the head 
of a class in English poetry : this is "Alex- 
ander's Feast, or the Power of Music." I 
have already, in reference to Pope's Ode 
for St. Cecilia's Day, made a few remarks 

concerning 



28 LETTER III. 

concerning lyric poetry properly so called,, 
or that which is intended for association 
with music. That before us was written 
on the same occasion , and the whole art of 
the poet has been employed to accommo- 
date it to musical expression. The subject 
is peculiarly happy, as being a striking 
example of that influence of music over 
the passions which it was the business of 
the day to celebrate. Narration and imita- 
tion go hand in hand ; and the manner of 
relating the effects produced, tells at the 
same time how they were produced. The 
changes of measure seem to flow sponta- 
neously from those in the action. Perhaps 
it would not be easy to show the exact and 
exclusive adaptation of each strain to its 
particular subject ; yet in general the ear 
is satisfied, and recognises that concordance 
between the sound and the sense which it 
was the poet's aim to exhibit. In some in- 
stances this is peculiarly happy ; and it has 
been a favourite trial of skill in recitation 
to give an adequate vocal expression to the 
i most 



DRYDEN. 29 

most distinguished passages of this ode. 
There is an air of freedom arid facility in 
the whole, which renders probable the tra- 
dition that it was " struck off at a heat; 77 
whereas the ode of Pope on the same occa- 
sion bears all the marks of study and la- 
bour. 

The universal applause with which this 
piece has been received, is a proof how 
much more congenial to the mind is the 
interest arising from an historical, fact, 
than that excited by mythological or alle- 
gorical fiction. Its effect is obviously en- 
hanced by that rapid uninterrupted flow of 
narration, which does not suffer the readers 
attention to flag, but carries him on from 
.scene to scene with unchecked ardour. It 
has that unity of subject which is essential 
to the production of warm emotions ; and 
in this respect, Dryden's Alexander's Feast 
is widely different in its construction from 
the generality of lyric poems, in which the 
rule seems to have been, to introduce as 
much variety as possible, with the most 

sudden 



30 LETTER III. 

sudden and unexpected transitions. You 
will hereafter have an opportunity of ob- 
serving* the performance of great masters 
upon this plan. I might, indeed, refer you 
to the practice of Dryden himself, in his 
" Ode to the Memory of Mrs. Killegrew ;" 
a composition which no less a judge than 
Dr. Johnson has pronounced one of the 
finest of its class in the English language. 
I know not that it has received such com- 
mendation from any other modern critic ; 
and to me, I confess, it appears such a 
medley of extravagance and conceit, that 
I can only account for the favour it has met 
with from the eminent writer above men- 
tioned, upon the supposition of its having 
fallen in with one of those early associa- 
tions, which are continually imposing pre- 
judices upon us in the shape of judgments. 
But it is time now to close my lecture : 
so adieu ! 

Your truly affectionate, &c. 



LETTER 



WALLER. 31 



LETTER IV. 



Supposing my pupil to be well grounded 
in the harmony and diction of Dryden and 
Pope, I now proceed to put into her hands 
other standard writers, who rank in the same 
poetical class, though they have reached only 
an inferior point of excellence. 

The courtly Waller, to whom the 
praise is commonly, but unjustly, given of 
having been the first who wrote rhymed 
heroic verse with elegance and correctness, 
may certainly lay claim to a lady's notice, 
since to her sex he devoted some of his 
choicest strains. I am apprehensive, how- 
ever, that his gallantries may seem to you 
somewhat far-fetched, and his compliments 
over-strained, and that, for your own part, 
you would prefer tenderness to deification. 
Love, in its highest tone, is, indeed, favour- 
able to poetry, which scorns the limits of 

truth 



32 LETTER IV. 

truth and nature, and in every thing affects 
hyperbole. But in such cases, the fancy is 
gratified at the expense of the feeling, and 
fiction occupies the place of reality. 

There are three topics which poets (and 
often the same poets) treat in a similar 
manner; devotion, love, and loyalty: or 
rather, they apply to the two latter, ex- 
pressions and sentiments borrowed from 
the former. Thus Waller, speaking of his 
Saccharissa ; 

Scarce can I to Heaven excuse 
The devotion which I use 
Unto that adored dame, 
For 'tis not unlike the same 
Which I thither ought to send. 

In the piece containing these lines, he 
has made an ingenious parallel between his 
high-flown passion for this lady, and that 
which at the same time he felt for one 
whom he calls Amoret ; and you may make 
it an exercise of the heart, as well as of the 
taste, to consider whether you would have 
chosen to be the poet's Saccharissa or his 
i Amoret. 



WALLER. 33 

Amoret. I am inclined to think that the 
latter had the best chance of being long 
and truly loved. We know, from Waller's 
history, that he did not obtain his Saccha- 
ris^a, and yet he does not appear to have 
been a sufferer from amorous disappoint- 
ment, It is, however, but an idle task to 
compare a poet's life with his verses ; and 
the grave critics who have spent much pains 
on such disquisitions with respect to many 
eminent votaries of the Muses, have only 
proved how little they entered into the 
character and feelings of this capricious set 
of mortals. 

In Waller, the affection of loyalty was 
not less mutable than that of love, and he 
equally made it the servant of present do- 
minion, in. whatever hands. His " Pane- 
gyric of Cromwell" is thought to be the 
composition in which his muse has taken 
the loftiest flight. The cause of its superi- 
ority to others of his adulatory strains was 
probably the reverse of that which he in- 
geniously suggested by way of apology to 
d Charles 



Si LETTETl lY. 

Charles II. — " thai poets succeed belter in 
fiction than in truth: " it was, that in Crom- 
well he had a really great though a bad 
man to celebrate ; with whom the indolent 
and irtglorious Charles could stand in no 
degree of competition. From this piece 
you may take the measure of his powers in 
the heroic style. You will find them not 
inconsiderable, though wanting the support 
of correct taste and uniform elevation of 
thought. I imagine, however, that you 
will receive more pleasure from some of his 
lighter effusions, in which his fancy sports 
with ease and grace. The application of the 
story of Phoebus and Daphne to a poet who 
obtained the laurel, while he missed the 
object of his amorous pursuit, was greatly 
admired in its day, and may, even in this 
corrector age, be allowed the praise of in- 
genuity, though its concluding point is but 
a kind of play on words. I shall not par- 
ticularize other pieces, but leave you the 
agreeable employment of culling from his 
poetic garden those which best please you. 

, There 



PRIOR. 3;> 

There are weeds in it, but, I think, no 
poisonous or offensive plants. 

I shall next desire you to take down the 
works of Prior, a poet whose fame is 
indeed somewhat obscured by time, but 
who has just claims to a reader's attention. 
You will find his versification generally me- 
lodious, and well varied in its pauses ; his 
diction elegant and animated, and his ideas 
copious and poetical. He is apt to run into 
prolixity, and the subjects of many of his 
serious pieces are such as would afford you 
little entertainment; for what is less in- 
teresting than the incense bestowed upon 
royal and titled personages, after they have 
ceased to be the living objects of a respect 
which, perhaps, always belonged more to 
their stations than to themselves ? When 
these temporary pieces, and others which 
I cannot with propriety recommend to your 
perusal, arc abstracted, Prior's works will 
shrink to a small compass. 

His " Henry and Emma" is too celebra- 
ted among amatory compositions not to de- 
mand 



S6 LETTER IV. 

mand your notice. The story belongs to 
an older writer, but has been so much 
adorned and amplified by Prior, that it 
may almost pass for an original production. 
1 le has, however, spun it rather too fine, 
and has assigned to it a refinement of 
manners and sentiment which destroys all 
the costume of the age in which the scene 
is laid. Yet if you can overcome the dis- 
taste you will naturally feel for the hard 
and unfair trials to which Emma is sub- 
jected, and her too fond compliance with 
unreasonable requisitions, you will not fail 
to derive pleasure from the beauty of the 
poetry. 

The poem of " Solomon" is the author's 
principal work of the serious kind, and it 
is certainly no ordinary performance. You 
will not read it as a guide either in natural 
or moral philosophy, for in these points it 
lias many defects ; nor is the general infer- 
ence, " all is vanity," a maxim which it is 
practically useful to inculcate. Though a 
voluptuous monarch missed his way in the 

pursuit 



rnioit. ol 

pursuit of happiness, it does not follow that 
private virtue and wisdom may not attain 
such a share of it as is permitted toman in 
his present imperfect condition : at least, 
all things are not equally vain, and reason 
has sufficient scope for exercising a choice, 
f Jut comfortless as the doctrine of human 
misery appears, it lias always been a favour- 
ite topic with rhetoricians and poets, who 
seem to have found in it a source of that 
sublime which consists in dark and awful 
ideas. Prior has dwelt upon it with un- 
usual energy^ and the following moral cli- 
max upon the subject is truly poetical : 

Happy the mortal man, who now at last 

Has thro' this doleful vale of misery past; 

Who to his destin'd stage has carried on 

The tedious load, and laid his burthen down ; 

Whom the cut brass, or wounded marble, shows 

Victor o'er life and all her train of woes! 

He, happier yet, who privileged by fate 

To shorter labour, and a lighter weight, 

Keceiv'd but yesterday the gift of breath, 

Order'd tomorrow to return to death. 

But O ! beyond description happiest he, 

Who ne'er must roll on life's tumultuous sea ; 

Who 



*S LETTER IV. 

Who, with blest freedom, from the general doom 
Exempt, must never force the teeming womb, 
Nor see the sun, nor sink into the tomb ! 



} 



To give any sense to this latter clause, 
the notion of a pre-existent state must be 
admitted, which has met with several grave 
assertors, though apparently little conform- 
able to reason or revelation. 

The most pleasing part of the poem of 
" Solomon," is that in which the loves of 
the Jewish king with the Egyptian maid, 
and with Abra, are described. The con- 
trast between the two females is finely 
drawn ; and the empire gradually esta- 
blished over the royal lover by the gentle 
and complying Abra is an instructive piece 
of moral painting. 

It is possible that this poem may tire 
you before you have got through the three 
books : yet the matter is well varied, and 
the narration is skilfully broken by senti- 
ment and reflection. But it is Prior's fault 
that he cannot resist an occasion to am- 
plify 5 and he often indulges in a trite ser- 



monizing 



PRIOR. SB 

mortizing 1 strain, which all (he splendour of 
his language does not prevent from be- 
coming tedious. You will observe here 
and there in his verse a quick succession of 
triplets, which have an unpleasant effect on 
the ear by breaking the regularity of the 
measure, and seem merely a luxuriance of 
the faulty redundance of his style. 

I shall not set you to read any of his 
prolix compositions called Odes, in which 
he celebrates William and Anne, or la- 
ments for Mary. Neither the subjects, 
nor his manner of treating them, would 
probably interest you. 

But I wish it were easy for me to direct 
your eye to the best of his smaller puces, 
which are unfortunately interspersed among 
so much inferior and so much improper 
matter, that many pages must be turned 
over to get at them. I will, however, point 
out a few, which you may find by the help 
of the table of contents. 

Prior has given us some of the best speci- 
mens of those short amatory poems in stan- 
zas, 



40 



LETTER IV. 



zas, of returning measures, which are usu- 
ally called songs , thotigh, perhaps, they may 
never be set to music. It is remarkable, 
that in twenty-eight actual songs, set by the 
most eminent masters, he has scarcely given 
one worth reading. But some really good 
ones are interspersed in his works, which 
may serve to give you a taste of this pleasing 
species of composition. The piece beginning 
44 The merchant to secure his treasure 1 ' inge- 
niously compares the different appearances 
of real and of pretended love.* 4 If wine and 
music have the power," is a. poetical ode up- 
on the Horatian model. Pathetic tenderness 
characterizes the two short pieces of which 
the first lines are " Yes, fairest proof of 
beauty's power," and "In vain you tell your 
parting lover." That entitled " Phillis's 
Age" is an example of the witty and sati- 
rical manner. The " Despairing Shepherd" 
beautifully paints that pure and exalted 
passion which is the soul of romance. 
When love of this kind was in credit, "He 
bow'd, obey'd, and died," must have been 

the 



PRIOR. 



41 



the very perfection of amorous allegiance. 
In " The Garland" a touching moral is 
deduced with great elegance from a cir- 
cumstance well adapted to poetical descrip- 
tion. The " Lady's Looking-glass" may 
rank with this in subject, though not writ- 
ten in stanzas. " The female Phaeton" is 
a piece of great sprightliness, wrought to 
an epigrammatic point, founded, like Wal- 
ler's Phoebus and Daphne, upon a classical 
allusion. The extravagance of " set (he 
world on fire" would be admired at a time 
when men of wit and gallantry thought 
they could not go too far in complimenting 
a lady. Among the pieces called ballads, 
by which were meant a species of nar- 
rative songs in a familiar and humorous 
style, you will be amused with u Down- 
Hall," and " The Thief and Cordelier." 

It is mortifying that the talent for which 
Prior is particularly famous, that of telling 
a story with ease and pleasantry, should 
have been exercised upon such topics as 
absolutely to preclude a young lady from 



42 liETTfcil IV. 

enjoying it. I can only venture to give 
you a taste of his manner by "the English 
Padlock/' which is written with his cha^ 
racteristic vivacity, and contains a very 
good moral. 

You cannot at present be prepared to 
relish his comico-philosophical poem of 
" Alma;" and I think we have already 
dwelt long enough upon the works of art 
author, whose beauties are of a kind not 
the most favourable to the formation of a 
correct taste, 

Adieu ! 



LETTER 



r 43 j 



LETTER V. 



We will next, my dear Mary, turn to an 
author, one of whose praises it is, never 
to have written " a line which, dying, he 
would wish to blot"— the moral and ele- 
gant Addison. He ranks, indeed, much 
higher as a writer of prose than of verse, 
yet he first came into notice for his talents 
in the latter capacity. He had the fortune 
to live at a time when the union of poetry 
with loyalty bore a high value, and his 
praises of William and Marlborough were 
rewarded with pensions and public employ- 
ments. The subjects of these pieces pro* 
bably will not much recommend them to 
you; yet the second, entitled " The 
Campaign," retains considerable celebrity 
among poems of its class. It is composed 
with care, and supports an uniform and 
polished dignity : several of its passages 

even 



44r LETTER V. 

even rise to a degree of sublimity. The 
simile of the destroying angel, to whom 
Marlborough at the battle of Blenheim is- 
com pared, has been much admired: 

So when an angel by divine command 
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, 
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia past, 
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast : 
And pleas'd th> Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind, and directs the storm. 

An objection has been made against this 
simile, that it too nearly resembles the pri- 
mary object; for the Angel and Marl- 
borough are both represented as performing 
a task of destruction under the command 
of a superior, and both are rational beings 
exerting similar mental qualities. But if 
this circumstance be a deduction from the 
ingenuity of the thought, it is none from 
its grandeur, or from the value of the pa- 
rallel as enhancing the idea of the poet's 
hero. No greater conception of a chief in 
battle can be formed, than that of a supe- 
rior being, in tranquil security, directing 

the 



ADDISON. 45 

the furious movements of a resistless force, 
and intent only upon executing the com- 
mission with which he is charged. 

The " Letter from Italy" has long held 
a distinguished place among descriptive 
poems. It possesses the advantage of local 
topics well adapted to poetry ; for nature 
and art seem to contend in decorating the 
happy region which is its subject : there is 
little, however, of the enthusiasm of ge- 
nius in Addison's sketches, and his pencil 
seems rather guided by cool reflection than 
ardent emotion. The praise of liberty is 
the theme on which he is most animated, 
yet his encomiums on it are vague and 
uncharacteristic. The " goddess heav'nly 
bright, Profuse of bliss and pregnant with 
delight," has no attributes to distinguish 
her from any other beneficent deity. 

Of his miscellaneous pieces, none is so 
worthy of attention as that addressed " to 
Kneller on his Picture of the King." The 
parallel between the heathen gods and a 

series 



4(5 LETTER V. 

series of the English kings is singularly 
ingenious and happy. 

His " Hymns" have deservedly obtained 
a distinguished place in collections of sa- 
cred poesy. With sufficient polish and 
elevation, they preserve that simplicity of 
language which is requisite for the clear 
expression of sentiment, and which ap- 
pears more favourable to devotion than 
the lolly obscurity of metaphorical dic- 
tion. 

A great portion of Addison's verse con- 
sists of translation from the Latin poets. 
These do not rise beyond a kind of elegant 
mediocrity, and are of little value in them- 
selves. It may, however, be worth your 
while to read those from Ovid, as amusing 
tales, which will initiate you in those an- 
tient fictions to which so many allusions 
are made hf modern poets. The story of 
Phaeton is one of the most splendid of 
these, and perhaps the most poetical pro- 
duction of its author: nor has the trans- 
lator 



•PATtNETX. M 

ia tor been wanting in diligence to render it 
agreeable to the English reader. 

It would be unjust to the relative merit 
of Addison not to remark, that the force 
of his poetical powers is principally di- 
splayed in his tragedy of u Cato," a per- 
formance to which the plan of my present 
letter does not extend, but which will un- 
doubtedly at some period come within the 
•compass of your reading. With respect 
to his opera of u Rosamond," it is a tune** 
-ful trifle which you may turn over when- 
ever you find it engage your curiosity. It 
w ill supply you with some new specimens 
of singularly melodious versification. 

Parnell is a poet who may be put into 
your hands with a certainty of affording 
you pleasure; nor is there any need of se- 
lection in Iiis works, as far as those con- 
tained in Pope's edition, which terminates 
with the " Hermit." These, however, do 
not constitute a third part of the matter in 
•the modern editions of Parncll's poems. 
Of these copious appendages Dr. Johnson 

says, 



48 LETTER V. 

says, u I know not whence they came, 
nor have ever inquired whither they are 
going;" and if, in an express criticism on 
the author, he thought himself justified in 
treating them with so much indifFerence, I 
may surely take the same liberty, when it 
is my sole object to point out such pieces 
as may most agreeably impress you with 
his characteristic excellencies. These are, 
uncommon sweetness and clearness of lan- 
guage, melodious versification, lively ele- 
gance of sentiment, and force of descrip- 
tion. 

The first piece in the volume, entitled 
" Ilesiod, or the Rise of Woman," is a 
sprightly and ingenious fable, of which he 
is indebted to the old Grecian bard only 
for the bare outline. It is somewhat saucy 
with respect to your sex ; yet I think you 
will excuse the following list of the talents 
conferred by Venus on the first woman, 
on account of the beauty with which they 
are enumerated. 

Then 



PARNELL. 49 

Then in a kiss she breath'd her various arts 
Of trifling prettily with wounded hearts ; 
A mind for love, but still a changing mind ; 
The lisp affected, and the glance design'd • 
The sweet confusing blush, the secret wink ; 
The gentle-swimming walk, the courteous sink ; 
The stare for strangeness fit, for scorn the frown ; 
For decent yielding, looks declining down; 
The practis'd languish, where well-feign'd desire 
Would own its melting in a mutual fire ; 
Gay smiles to comfort ; April showers to move ; 
And all the nature, all the art, of love. 

Tlie u Fairy Tale" is a very pleasant 
sport of the fancy employed to produce an 
interesting moral. I know nothing of the 
kind in English poetry that equals it. 

Much imagination is displayed in the 
" Allegory on Man," particularly in the 
picture of Young Time, a new personage 
in poetry. The doom pronounced upon 
Man, of having Care assigned him through 
life for an inseparable companion, has too 
serious a truth for its foundation ! 

In the " Night-piece on Death/' the 
meditation among the tombs is finely in- 
troduced with a solemn and majestic land- 
e scape. 



50 LETTER T. 

scape, "which gives a suitable preparatory 
impression to the mind. The sudden 
change of scene at — 

Ha ! while I gaze pale Cynthia fades, 
The bursting earth unveils the shades ! 



is one of the most striking incidents to be 
met with in descriptive poetry. 

But the most popular production of this 
poet is " The Hermit/' a tale, in the em- 
bellishment of which, he has manifestly 
exerted his highest powers. The story 
itself, intended to elucidate the doctrine of 
a particular providence, is of antient inven- 
tion, and Parnell has only the merit of tell- 
ing it in a poetical manner. In his nar- 
ration he has preserved a due medium 
between dry conciseness and prolixity ; and 
though his diction is cultured, it is not 
overloaded with ornament. 

Of the smaller pieces in the volume, the 
songs, odes, eclogues, &c, the general cha- 
racter is sprightliness and elegance. The 
translation of the " Battle of the Frog* 

and 



PARNELL. 51 

and Mice, commonly attributed to Ho- 
mer," is well executed ; but it has been 
justly remarked that the humorous effect 
of the proper names, which are all signi- 
ficative in the Greek, is lost to the En- 
glish reader. 

Swift, in one of his familiar poems, says, 

— Have you nothing new to-day 

From Pope, from Parneil, or from Gay ? 

All these authors were his friends, and 
entertained the public at the same time : 
but though he has mentioned them toge- 
ther, he certainly did not estimate them all 
at the same rate. Pope's superiority could 
not be a subject of question. The other 
two, though considerably different in their 
merits, might bear a comparison with each 
other in point of genius. Gay, however, 
as the more copious and various writer, 
makes a greater figure than Parneil in the 
gallery of English poets, and has acquired 
a degree of reputation which renders his 
name familiar to all readers of poetry. 

Gay 



5? LETTER V. 

Gay is an original author, who drew his 
images and sentiments from the store of 
his own observation. He has no claim to 
sublimity, and has little of the warmth 
and enthusiasm which denote a poet of the 
higher order ; but he is easy and natural, 
sometimes elegant, often pleasant, gene- 
rally amusing, and never tiresome. His 
works are extremely varied in subject and 
manner, and require selection both in re- 
spect to merit and propriety. I shall, as in 
other cases, content myself with pointing 
out such as will afford you a competent 
view of his poetical character, and at the 
same time furnish you with suitable enter- 
tainment. 

If his first essay in verse, the " Rural 
Sports," be compared with Pope's juvenile 
Windsor Forest, the difference will appear 
strongly marked between one, who, with 
only ordinary powers of language and ver- 
sification, describes what he has himself 
observed ; and one, who, skilled in all the 
mechanism of poetry, gives a splendid 

colouring 



GAY. 53 

colouring to objects borrowed from the 
stock of written description. Country 
sports, indeed, have frequently been the 
theme of poets, but Gay introduces many 
incidents which are exclusively his own. 

Originality is, however, much more 
strongly stamped upon his next poem, 
" Trivia, or The Art of walking the Streets 
in London," in the plan and execution of 
w Inch he has undoubtedly the claim of an 
inventor. The piece is an example of what 
may be termed the grave comic, or bur- 
lesque-heroic, in which, ludicrous or vul- 
gar subjects are treated in a style of mock- 
elevation. Its matter is professedly didactic 
or preceptive ; and it is indeed so seriously 
instructive in the art it proposes to teach, 
that were not the art itself of a low kind, 
and attended with comic circumstances, it 
would Lose the character of burlesque. A 
young lady cannot fully enter into the hu- 
mour of this production, for it is not to 
be supposed that she has been an unpro- 
tected 



54 LETTER V. 

tected pedestrian at all hours in the streets 
of the metropolis ; yet many of the inci- 
dents may be easily conceived, and are ex- 
tremely amusing. The stop in the street 
at the pass of St. Clement's is described in 
a manner which will excite the shuddering 
recollection of every practised walker. If 
you have ever seen a fire, you will recog- 
nise the accuracy and force with which it 
is painted : 

At first a glowing red enwraps the skies, 

And borne by winds the scattering sparks arise ; 

From beam to beam the fierce contagion spreads; 

The spiry flames now lift aloft their heads ; 

Thro' the burst sash a blazing deluge pours, 

And splitting tiles descend in rattling showers, &c. 

The origin of the Patten is a pretty my- 
thological fiction. That which relates the 
birth of the shoe-blacking art, was pro- 
bably derived from one of those hints 
which the poet acknowledges to have re- 
ceived from his friend Swift, and too much 
partakes of the uncleanliness of his imagi- 
nation. 



GAY. 5j 

nation. On the whole, while I confess 
" Trivia" to be a favourite of mine, I scarce- 
ly expect that it will become yours. 

Gay doubtless rather aimed at pleasing 
his fair friends by his poem of " The Fan," 
in which he has exerted all the elegance 
and delicacy of his invention. This piece 
also comes under the head of burlesque 
poetry, on account of the disproportion 
between its subject, and the weight of 
machinery it employs. By this term is 
understood that agency of supernatural 
powers, which, whilst it aggrandises the 
lofty topics of the epic muse, serves, by 
way of contrast, to enhance the humour 
of light and ludicrous compositions. As 
an acquired taste is requisite for entering 
into the spirit of such fictions, I know- 
not whether -you are yet prepared to relish 
the mock-solemnity of a council of the 
Gods debating upon the decorations of a 
fan ; but a classical critic will tell you that 
there is much beauty of adaptation in the 
subjects proposed by different doilies (<>r 



56 LETTER V. 

paintings on the mount ; and you will be 
sensible of the elegance of description in 
various parts of the detail. 

Your attention is next called to " The 
Shepherd's Week/' a set of Pastorals ; but 
some information concerning the occasion 
of their composition will usefully precede 
the perusal. I have already observed to 
you, that Pope's Pastorals have little other 
merit than the melody of their versification 
and splendour of their diction, and that 
they paint neither the scenery nor the man- 
ners of the country. They were received, 
however, with an applause, which seems 
to have excited the envy of Ambrose Phi- 
lips, a cotemporary poet, who attempted 
to correct the public taste by a specimen 
of pastoral poetry written upon a plan 
which he conceived more suitable to this 
species of composition. His pastorals 
were, therefore, in their language and in- 
cidents, of a much more simple and rustic 
cast ; in which they certainly made a nearer 
approach to the original Greek models, 

and 



GAY. 57 

and gave a more natural representation of 
rural life. This simplicity, however, in 
some instances was capable of being set in 
a ludicrous point of view ; and Pope ex- 
cited a laugh against them by an ironical 
paper in the " Guardian." 

Gay entered the field as an auxiliary to 
Pope ; and by way of exaggerating the 
ridicule thrown upon vulgar pastoral, un- 
dertook to write a set of pieces in which 
the real manners of country clowns should 
be painted, without any fictitious softening. 
But the result was probably very different 
from what either he or his friends expect- 
ed ; for these burlesque pastorals became 
the most popular compositions of that 
class in the lan^ua^e. The ridicule in 
them is, indeed, sufficiently obvious to a 
cultivated reader ; but such is the charm 
of reality, and so grateful to the general 
feelings are the images drawn from rural 
scenes, that they afforded amusement to 
all ranks of readers ; and they who did not 
comprehend the jest, enjoyed them as faith- 
ful 



58 LETTER V. 

fill copies of nature. Gay, as I have al- 
ready remarked, was a curious observer ; 
and whether in the streets of London, or in 
a Devonshire village, he noted down every 
thing that came in his view. Whatever 
he thus had stored in his memory, he 
brought forth in his compositions in the 
same mixed groups that nature herself pre- 
sents, where the elegant and the vulgar, 
1 he serious and the comic, march side by 
side. Thus, in the Pastorals before us, 
while he pursues his primary design of bur- 
lesque parody, he paints rural scenes with 
a truth of pencil scarcely elsewhere to be 
met with ; and even pathetic circumstances 
are intermixed with strokes of sportive 
humour. The death of Blouzelind, in the 
fifth pastoral, with some omissions would 
make a scene more touching, because more 
natural, than most of the lamentable talcs 
of our modern sentimentalists. This sin- 
gular combination distinguishes several of 
Gay's productions, especially his dramas. 
I shall not recommend to you his epistles, 



GAY. 59 

eclogues, talcs, and other miscellaneous 
pieces. There is entertainment in them, 
but they want more selection than it is 
worth your while to bestow. But you will 
not neglect his two celebrated ballads of 
" All in the Downs," and " 'Twas when 
the seas were roaring," which have been 
sung and repeated by the grandmothers of 
the present generation. He has some other 
pleasing pieces of the song kind ; and his 
" Molly Mog" and " Song of Similes" 
are familiar in humorous poetry. 

Of all Gay's works, none, however, is so 
well known as his u Fables," many of 
which have probably already come in your 
way as part of (he juvenile library. I able, 
as a poetical composition, requires an union 
of various excellencies in order to render 
it perfect. It should be ingenious in its 
construction, and not merely the illustra- 
tion of some common moral, by attribut- 
ing to brutes the actions and sentiments of 
men. Its descriptions should be exactly 
copied from nature, and include us much 



60 LETTER V. 

as possible of the natural history of the 
animals who are made the persons of the 
drama. Its style of narration should be 
easy and sprightly, but not coarsely fami- 
liar. In the first of these qualities Gay 
has little claim to merit ; for very few of 
his fables display ingenuity of invention 
or refinement of moral. The " Jugglers" 
and the " Court of Death" perhaps stand 
the highest in this respect. His talent 
for minute observation makes him often 
happy in description ; and thougli his ani- 
mals act like mere men, they are generally 
introduced with appropriate portraiture and 
scenery. His language is for the .most 
part sufficiently easy without being vul- 
gar ; but it is destitute of those strokes of 
shrewd simplicity which so much charm 
in La Fontaine. As to the scope of his 
Fables, it is almost entirely satirical ; and 
you will probably be surprised to find, up- 
on consideration, how little suited many 
of them are to the avowed design of in- 
structing a young prince. But moral judg-< 

merit 



GAY. 61 

ment was by no means the forte of this 
writer. 

This epistle has run out to an unreason- 
able length, so I hasten to conclude it with 
an affectionate adieu. 

Yours, &c. 



LETTER 



C 62 ] 



LETTER VI. 



I now, my dear Mary, mean to treat you 
with a rarity — a writer perfect in his kind. 
It may be a doubt whether perfection in an 
inferior branch of art indicates higher ta- 
lents than something short of perfection in 
a superior; but it cannot be questioned 
that, by way of a study, and for the culti- 
vation of a correct taste, a perfect work 
in any department is a most valuable ob- 
ject. 

Dean Swift is in our language the mas- 
ter in familiar poetry. Without the peru- 
sal of his works no adequate conception 
can be formed of wit and humour moving 
under the shackles of measure and rhyme 
with as much ease as if totally unfettered ; 
and even borrowing grace and vigour from 
the constraint. In your progress hitherto, 
although it has been through some of our 

most 



SWIFT. 63 

most eminent poets, you cannot but have 
observed, that the necessity of finding a 
termination to a line of the same sound 
with that of the preceding, has frequently 
occasioned the employment of an impro- 
per word, such as without this necessity 
would never have suggested itself in that 
connexion. Indeed, it is not uncommon 
in ordinary versifiers to find a whole line 
thrown in for no other purpose than to in- 
troduce a rhyming word. How far rhyme 
is a requisite decoration of English verse, 
you will judge from your own perceptions, 
after perusing the best specimens of blank 
verse. It is manifest, however, that when 
employed, its value must be in proportion 
to its exactness, and to its coincidence 
with the sense. In these respects, Swift is 
without exception the most perfect rhymer 
in the language ; and you will admire how 
the very word which by its meaning seems 
most fit for the occasion, slides in without 
effort as the echo in sound to the terminat- 
ing word of the preceding line. Even dou- 
ble 



64 LETTER VI. 

ble and triple rhymes are ready at his call, 
and, though suggesting the most heteroge- 
neous ideas, are happily coupled by some 
of those whimsical combinations in which 
comic wit consists. 

The diction of Swift is the most complete 
example of colloquial ease that verse af- 
fords. In aiming at this manner, other 
writers are apt to run into quaintness and 
oddity ; but in Swift not a word or phrase 
occurs which does not belong to the natu- 
ral style of free conversation. It is true, 
this freedom is often indecorous, and would 
at the present day be scarcely hazarded 
by any one who kept good company, still 
less by a clergyman. Yet he has known 
how to make distinctions ; and while many 
of his satirical and humorous pieces are 
grossly tainted with indelicacies, some of 
his best and longest compositions are void 
of any thing that can justly offend. It is 
evident, indeed, that Swift, though desti- 
tute of genius for the sublimer parts of 
poetry, was sufficiently capable of elegance, 

had 



SWIFT. 63 

had he not preferred indulging his vein for 
sarcastic wit. No one could compliment 
more delicately when he chose it, as no 
one was a better judge of proprieties of 
behaviour, and the graces of the female 
character. 

From the preceding representation, you 
will conclude that I cannot set you to read 
Swift's works straight forwards. In fact, 
your way through them must be picked 
very nicely, and a large portion of them 
must be left un visited. It should be ob- 
served, however, to do him justice, that 
their impurities are not of the moral kind, 
but are chiefly such as it is the scavenger's 
office to remove. 

The first of his poems which 1 shall 
point out to your notice is the longest and 
one of the most serious of his compositions. 
Its title, " Cadenus and Vanessa," denotes 
his own concern in the subject; for Cadenus 
is Decanus (the Dean) transposed; and 
Vanessa is the poetical name of miss Varl- 
komrigh, a young lady whose unfortunate 
F love 



6.6 LETTER VI. 

love for him met with a cold return. This 
piece, under an ingenious mythological 
fiction, contains a fine compliment to the 
lady, and much severe satire on the greater 
part of her sex, as well as on the foppish 
part of ours. You must, indeed, in read- 
ing Swift, arm yourself with patience to 
endure the most contemptuous treatment 
of your sex; for which, if really justified 
by the low state of mental cultivation 
among the females of that period, you may 
console yourself by the advantageous com- 
parison afforded by that of the present age. 
The poem does not finish the real story ; 
for it says, 

what success Vanessa met 



Is to the world a secret yet. 

The melancholy truth was, that after 
uniting himself secretly with another wo- 
man, he continued to visit Vanessa, and 
she retained her hopes of softening his ob- 
duracy, till a final explanation broke her 
heart. This poem was in her possession, 

and 



swot. o* 

and by her direction was published after 
her death. 

The " Poems to Stella" will naturally 
follow. This was the lady to whom the 
former was sacrificed ; but she seems to 
have had little enjoyment in the preference. 
His pride, or his singularity, made him re- 
fuse his consent to the publication of their 
marriage, and they continued to live apart 
as mere friends. Yet he appears to have 
sincerely loved her, probably beyond any 
other human being ; and almost the only 
sentiments of tenderness in his writings 
are to be found in the poems addressed to 
her. This affection, however, does not in 
general characterize them, and the writer's 
disposition to raillery breaks out in the 
midst of his most complimentary strains. 
A Frenchman would be shocked at his fre- 
quent allusions to her advancing years. 
His exposure of her defects, too, may seem 
much too free for a lover, or even a hus- 
band ; and it is easy to conceive that Stella's 
temper was fully tried in the connection. 

Yet 



68 LETTER VI. 

Yet a woman might be proud of the seri- 
ous approbation of such a man, which he 
expresses in language evidently coming 
from the heart. They are, indeed, 

Without one word of Cupid's darts, 
Of killing eyes and bleeding hearts ; 

but they contain topics of praise which 
far outlive the short season of youth and 
beauty. How much superior to frivolous 
gallantry is the applause testified in lines 
like these ! 

Say, Stella, feel you no content 

Reflecting on a life well spent ? 

Your skilful hand employ'd to save 

Despairing wretches from the grave, 

And then supporting with your store 

Those whom you dragg'd from death before ? 

Your generous boldness to defend 

An innocent and absent friend - y 

That courage which can make you just 

To merit humbled in the dust ; 

The detestation you express 

For vice in all its glittering dress ; 

That patience under tort'ring pain 

Where stubborn stoics would complain ? 



In 



SWIFT. 69 

In the lines " To Stella visiting him in 
sickness/' there is a picture of honour, as 
influencing the female mind, which is mo- 
rally sublime, and deserves attentive study : 

Ten thousand oaths upon record 
Are not so sacred as her word ; 
The world shall in its atoms end 
Ere Stella can deceive a friend -> &c. 

There is something truly touching in 
the description of Stella's ministring in the 
sick chamber, where 

with a soft and silent tread 

Unheard she moves about the bed. 

In all these pieces there is an originality 
which proves how much the author's ge- 
nius was removed from any thing trite and 
vulgar : indeed, his life, character and 
writings were all singularly his own, and 
distinguished from those of other men. 

May I now, without offence, direct you 
by way of contrast to the " Journal of a 
Modern Lady ?" It is, indeed, an outra- 
geous satire on your sex, but one perfectly 

harmless 



70 LETTER VI. 

harmless with respect to yourself or any 
whom you love. I point it out as an admi- 
rable example of the author's familiar and 
colloquial manner. It also exhibits a spe- 
cimen of his powers in that branch of poe- 
tical invention which is regarded as one of 
the higher efforts of the art. A more ani- 
mated group of personifications is not easily 
to be met with than the following lines 
exhibit : 

When, frighted at the clamorous crew, 
AAvay the God of Silence flew, 
And fair Discretion left the place, 
And Modesty, with blushing face. 
Now enters overweening Pride. 
And Scandal ever gaping wide, 
Hypocrisy with frown severe, 
Scurrility with gibing air, 
Rude Laughter, seeming like to burst, 
And Malice, always judging worst, 
And Vanity with pocket-glass, 
And Impudence with front of brass, 
And study'd Affectation came, 
Each limb and feature out of frame, 
While Ignorance, with brain of lead, 
Flew hov'ring o'er each female head. 

The 



SWIFT. 71 

The poems of Swift are printed in a dif- 
ferent order in different editions: I shall 
therefore attend to no particular order in 
mentioning them to you. As I have com- 
mended the last for the easy familiarity of 
its style, I shall next refer to one which 
perhaps stands the first in this respect ; 
and in which, not only the language of the 
speakers, but their turn of thinking, is 
imitated with wonderful exactness. This 
is, " The Grand Question debated, whe- 
ther Hamilton's Bawn should be turned 
into a Barrack or a Malt-house." The mea- 
sure is that which is classically called ana- 
paestic, chiefly consisting of feet or por- 
tions composed of two short and one long 
syllable, i^ex^t to that of eight syllables, 
it is the most used for light and humorous 
topics ; and no kind of English verse runs 
so glibly, or gives so much the air of con- 
versation. The satire of the piece is chiefly 
directed against the gentlemen of the army, 
for whom Swift, probably through party 
prepossessions, seems always to have en- 
tertained 



72 LETTER VI. 

tertained both aversion and contempt. It 
is, however, irresistibly pleasant. 

Another conversation piece which rivals 
the last in ease, though not in humour, is 
" Mrs. Harris's Petition." The singularity 
of it is the long loose measure in which it 
is written, and which indeed is scarcely to 
be called verse, though divided into lines 
terminated with rhyme. Swift was fond 
of oddities of all kinds, some of which 
sink into mere puerilities. The number of 
these, raked together by injudicious editors, 
would have injured his reputation, had it 
not been solidly founded upon pieces of 
real excellence. 

The story of " Baucis and Philemon," 
imitated from Ovid, is one of the happiest 
examples of that kind of humour which 
consists in modernising an antient subject 
in the way of parody. It will be worth 
your while first to read a translation of the 
original tale, which you will find in Dry- 
den's Fables. The dexterity with which 
Swift has altered it to his purpose, cannot 

fail 



SWIFT. 73 

fail to strike you upon the comparison. 
The particulars of the transformation are 
fancied with all the circumstantial propriety 
for which this author is famous, and are 
described with great pleasantry. The par- 
sonifying of Philemon gives occasion to 
some sarcastic strokes against his own pro- 
fession, in which he frequently indulged, 
though he could not readily bear them from 
others. 

His imitations from Horace, those, espe- 
cially, which begin " Harley the nation's 
great support," and " I've often wish'd 
that I had clear," are equally excellent. 
They do not, like the former, borrow a 
subject from antiquity, but follow allu- 
sively the train of thought and incident 
presented by the original. You must, I 
fear, be content to lose the pleasure de- 
rived from this allusive resemblance; but 
you cannot fail of being entertained by the 
ease and humour with which he tells his 
story. In these qualities he is certainly 
unrivalled ; and the pieces in question would 
aflbrd an useful study to one who should 

investigate 



74 LETTER VI. 

investigate the means by which this air of 
facility is obtained . The colloquial touches 
in the following lines are admirable in this 
view: 

>Tis (let me see) three years and more, 
(October next it will be fo^ur.) — 

My lord — the honour you designed — 
Extremely proud — but 1 had din'd. — 

Though many more entertaining pick- 
ings may be made from this author, and 
even some pieces of considerable length 
might be safely recommended to your 
perusal, (as, for example, the " Rhapsody 
on Poetry," and the " Beast's Confes- 
sion,") yet I shall bring my remarks to a 
conclusion, with the u Verses on his own 
Death," a piece written in the maturity of 
his powers, and upon which he evidently 
bestowed peculiar attention. Its founda- 
tion is a maxim too well suited to Swift's 
misanthropical disposition ; and he must 
be allowed to have illustrated it with much 
knowledge of mankind, as well as with a 
large portion of his characteristic humour. 

Yet 



SWIFT. 75 

Yet it may be alleged, that his temper 
was too little calculated to inspire a tender 
affection in his friends, to render the man- 
ner in which his death would be received, 
an example for all similar cases. Still it is, 
perhaps, generally true> that in the cala- 
mities of others, 

Indifference clad in wisdom's guise 
All fortitude of mind supplies; 

and that the ordinary language of lamen- 
tation at the decease of one not intimately 
connected with us, and whose life was 
not greatly important to our happiness, is 
little more than, as he has represented it, 
the customary cant of feeling. We must 
likewise assent to the remark on the force 
that selfishness gives to sympathy, which 
he has so finely expressed in the following 
lines : 

Yet should some neighbour fee] a pain 
Jus. in the parts where 1 complain, 
How many a message he would send ! 
What hearty prayers that I should mend ! 

Inquire 



76 LETTEft TI. 

Inquire what regimen I kept, 
What gave me ease, and how I slept j 
And more lament when I was dead 
Than all the snivellers round my bed. 

The lamentations of Lis female friends 
over their cards will amuse you, as one 
of his happiest conversation-pieces. The 
greater part of the poem is devoted to the 
justification of his character and conduct ; 
and, unless you have acquainted yourself 
with his life, will not greatly interest you. 
Indeed, I recollect reading it with greater 
pleasure in the earlier editions, when there 
was less detail of this kind. 

So much may suffice for an author who, 
upon the whole, is regarded rather as a 
man of wit than as a poet* Though in- 
imitable in one style of writing, his excel- 
lence is limited to that style. His works 
are extremely amusing, but the pleasure 
we take in them is abated by a vein of 
malignity which is too apparent even when 
he is most sportive. 

Farewell! 



pope. 77 



LETTER VII. 



MY DEAR MARY, 



You doubtless bear in mind, perhaps with 
some little chagrin, that I tore you, as it 
were, from the perusal of one of our most 
charming poets, precisely at the time 
when it was becoming peculiarly interest- 
ing to you. I then gave you the reason 
for such an exercise of discipline ; and I 
am persuaded you now feel the benefit of 
having been introduced to various modes 
of poetic excellence, before your taste was 
too firmly fixed upon one. 

I should probably take you a still wider 
excursion before returning to the volumes 
of Pope, did I not wish to engage you in 
the study (do not be alarmed at the word !) 
of one of his great performances, for the 
purpose of enlarging your acquaintance 
with poetic history ; that is, with the per- 
sonage?, 



78 LETTER VII. 

sonages, human and divine, and the inci- 
dents, which are so frequently alluded to 
in modern as well as in antient poetry. I 
refer to his translation of Homer's " Iliad," 
a work of remote antiquity, which stands 
at the head of epic poetry, and has a greater 
share of fame accumulated around it than 
perhaps any other literary composition. 
The Trojan war, its heroes and its gods, 
are a common fund upon which all poets 
draw at pleasure. They furnish an inex- 
haustible store for simile, allusion, parody, 
and other poetical uses ; and every writer 
takes it for granted that all the circum- 
stances belonging to them are perfectly 
familiar to his reader. Moreover, the 
whole frame of the epic, as a species of 
composition, is modelled upon the Iliad of 
Homer, and its companion the Odyssey ; 
whence the perusal of one or both of these 
pieces ought to precede that of all later pro* 
ductions of the same class. 

Pope's translations of Homer have al- 
ways been esteemed as first-rate perform- 
ances 



pope. 79 

ancesof the kind ; and indeed, no poetical 
versions surpass them in beauty of versifi- 
cation and elegance and splendour of dic- 
tion. They are faithful, too, as far as to 
the substance of the originals ; they nei- 
ther omit nor add circumstances of narra- 
tive or similes, and they adhere to the 
general sense of the Greek in speeches and 
sentiments. Bat with respect to the dress 
and colouring, it must be confessed that 
Pope and Homer differ in all the points 
that discriminate the writers of an age of 
refinement from those of an age of simpli- 
city. The antient bard, though lofty in 
his diction where the subject is elevated, 
relates common things in plain language, 
is sometimes coarse and frequently dry, and 
has many passages which exhibit nothing 
of the poet but a sonorous versification. 
The translator, on the other hand, never 
forgets that he is to support the dignity of 
modem heroics : and though he has too 
much judgment to scatter ornament with a 
lavish hand; yet, to soften what is harsh, 

to 



80 LETTER VII. 

to raise what is low, to enrich what U 
poor, and to animate what is insipid, are 
accommodations to a cultivated taste which 
he does not scruple to employ. 

The manner of Homer is therefore lost 
in Pope's representation of him ; and one 
whose object is to know how a poet wrote 
three thousand years ago, must have re- 
course to some version formed upon dif- 
ferent principles : of this kind a very good 
one has been given by the late excellent 
and lamented Cowper. But as an English 
poem, Pope's is certainly an admirable 
work ; and you will derive from it all the 
instruction on account of which I am now 
principally recommending it, while at the 
same time you are improving your relish 
for the beauties of verse. 

The Odyssey, though less poetical in 
the original than the Iliad, and less in- 
debted to the care of the translator, who 
employed two inferior hands to assist him 
in his labour, is not less worthy of your 
attention, on accouut of the more minute 

views 



POPE. SI 

Views it gives of the manners of antiquity > 
and the popular fables which it contains. 
Some parts of it, likewise, especially those 
including moral sentiment, are rendered 
with exquisite skill and beauty* 

If the task which I have enjoined you 
should prove tiresome before it is finished, 
you may interpose between the two trans- 
lations the perusal of the remaining origi- 
nal works of the same poet ; such, I mean, 
as I can properly recommend to a lady's 
view. 

Whether the u Epistle of Eloisa to Abe- 
lard" be among this number, is a point 
which I feel a difficulty in determining; 
yet its celebrity will scarcely suffer it 
to be passed over in silence. They who 
are afraid of the inflammatory effect of 
high colouring applied to the tender pas- 
sion-, will object to a performance which, 
as the most exquisitely finished of all the 
author's productions, is, from its subject, 
rendered the more dangerous on that ac- 
count. And true it is, that if the picture 

v G Of 



82 LETTER VII. 

of violent desires, unchecked by virtue 
and decorum 5 is to be regarded as too se- 
ductive, notwithstanding any annexed re- 
presentation of the sufferings to which they 
give rise, not only this poem, but much 
of the real history of human life, should 
be concealed from the youthful sight. But 
surely such a distrust of good sense and 
principle is unworthy of an age which en- 
courages a liberal plan of mental cultiva- 
tion. To be consistent, it ought to bring 
back that state of ignorance, which was 
formerly reckoned the best guard of inno- 
cence. The piece in question, it must be 
confessed, is faulty in giving too forcible 
an expression to sentiments inconsistent 
with female purity ; but its leading purpose 
is to paint the struggles of one, who, after 
the indulgence of a guilty passion, flew to 
a penitential retreat without a due prepara- 
tion for the change ; of a 

.-...wretch believ'd the spouse of God in vain, 
Confess'd within the slave of love and man. 

Such 



pope. 83 

Such a condition is certainly no object of 
emulation ; and the poet has painted its mi- 
series with no less force than the inconsi- 
derate raptures which led to it. The impres- 
sion supposed to be left by the story up- 
on better regulated minds, is that which 
prompts the prayer, 

O may we never love as these have lov'd ! 

The " Rape of the Lock," styled by the 
writer an heroi-comical poem, though one 
of his early productions, stands the first 
among similar compositions in our lan- 
guage, perhaps in any other. Besides pos- 
sessing the author's characteristic elegance 
and brilliancy of expression in a supreme 
degree, it exhibits a greater share of the 
inventive faculty than any other of his 
works. The humour of a piece of this 
kind consists in the mock dignity by which 
a trifling subject is elevated into impor- 
tance. When such a design is executed 
with judgment, all the parts should cor- 
respond; the moral therefore should be 

ironical, 



84 LETfEU Til. 

ironical, and the praise satirical. For at- 
taining consistency in these points, the 
spirit of the age and the character of the 
poet were well suited. 

I must here let you into a secret, which, 
while it may justly excite your indignation, 
may preserve you from deception. That 
extravagant devotion to your sex which, 
perhaps, was a serious passion in the age 
of chivalry, came in process of time, and 
especially as modified by the licentiousness 
and levity of the French nation, to be a 
mere affair of compliment. The free ad- 
mixture of women, which gave so much 
splendour and amenity to the French court, 
soon vitiated their manners ; and even while 
they enjoyed the greatest influence, they 
ceased to be respectable. Wholly occu- 
pied with the care of rendering themselves 
desirable to the men, they neglected the 
culture of their minds and the duties of 
their sex. They who possessed beauty, 
relied upon that solely for their power of 
attraction; while those less favoured by 

nature 



pope. 85 

nature sought a compensation in the graces. 
Although thus realty debased, they did not 
exert a less absolute dominion over cour- 
tiers and men of pleasure as frivolous and 
vitiated as themselves ; but in the mean 
time they lost the attachment of the sober 
and rational, and became objects of con- 
tempt to men of wit. In this state of things^ 
the high-flown language of adoration was 
intermixed with sly strokes of satire ; and 
at length, so much irony was joined with 
the praise, that a woman of sense would 
have regarded' it as an insult. 

Pope had been educated in the French 
school of literature. His earliest ambition 
was to be reckoned a man of wit and gal- 
lantry in the modish sense ; and having 
naturally a cold and artificial character, he 
was well fitted to assume the part most 
conducive to the interests of his reputa- 
tion. The personal disadvantages, too, un- 
der which he laboured, and which preclu- 
ded his success as a real lover, accustomed 
him to fiction in his addresses to the sex, 
and probably infused a secret exaspera- 
tion 



86 LETTER VII. 

tion into bis feelings when they were con- 
cerned. 

These observations are meant to be in- 
troductory not only to the burlesque poem 
before us, but to other pieces, in which the 
female sex is mentioned in a more serious 
manner. 

The Rape of the Lock is particularly ad- 
mired for the elegant and fanciful machi- 
nery introduced into it. Of the use of this 
part of an epic poem you will now be a bet- 
ter judge, in consequence of your acquaint- 
ance with Homer. You will have seen 
from his works, that its chief purpose is to 
vary and elevate flie fable by the ministry 
of a set of beings different from man, and 
surpassing him in faculties. That this mix- 
ture of supernatural agency is liable to de- 
tract from the consequence of the human 
personages, is an obvious objection to its 
use in serious compositions, whieh, how- 
ever, poets have thought to be counter- 
balanced by its advantages. In burlesque, 
the objection has no place. Pope, in his 
mock-heroic, has adopted a machinery de- 
rived 



POPE. &7 

rived from a fantastic kind of philosophy 
termed the Rosy crucian, but with such al- 
terations and additions as suited his pur- 
pose. He has formed it into one of the 
most amusing fictions to be met with in 
poetry ; airy, sportive, elegant, giving scope 
to descriptions of singular brilliancy, and 
admirably accommodated to his subject. 
The mode of action of these fairy-like 
beings is very happily fancied ; and never 
were guardian spirits better adapted to their 
charge than his Sylphs. It is theirs 

To save the powder from too rude a gale, 
Nor let th' imprison'd essences exhale ; 
To draw fresh colours from the vernal flow'rs ; 
To steal from rainbows ere they drop in show'rs 
A brighter wash ; to curl their waving hairs, 
Assist their blushes, and inspire their airs. 

The Gnomes are much less distinctly re- 
presented ; but the Cave of Spleen affords 
a striking specimen of the poet's talents for 
allegorical personification, and the figures 
of Ill-nature and Affectation are excellent 
sketches. 

The 



88 LETTER VII. 

The story of the piece is a trifling inci- 
dent that really happened, and, though not 
of an humorous nature, is well calculated 
to display that frivolity belonging to every 
thing in which the fair sex is concerned, 
which he assumes as the subject of his 
satire. A favourite figure by which he 
effects his purpose, is that of comic and 
degrading parallel ; as in the following 
lines : 

Whether the nymph shall break Diana's law, 

Or some frail China jar receive a flaw; 

Or stain her honour, or her new brocade ; 

Forget her pray'rs, or miss a masquerade; 

Or lose her heart, or necklace, at a ball ; 

Or whether heav'n has doom'd that Shock must fall. 

You will smile at these petty effusions 
of malice, which, in truth, have more of 
flippancy than wit ; and you will not the 
less enjoy the exquisite polish of the style, 
and dazzling lustre of the imagery, in this 
performance, which are surpassed by no- 
thing in the language. His parodies of 
Homer, a species of humour well adapted 

to 



pope. 89 

to the mock-heroic, and which he has 
managed with singular dexterity, will par- 
ticularly entertain you while you have his 
translations of that author fresh in your 
memory. 

The Rape of the Lock is our poet's 
principal effort in that great province of 
his art, creation. It might have been sup- 
posed that his success in this attempt 
would have encouraged him to proceed to 
others of a similar kind : but the exercise 
of the inventive faculties is the most labo- 
rious and exhausting of mental operations ; 
and many writers who have gained reputa- 
tion by one or two productions of this class > 
have found the exertion too great to be 
continued. Pope's genius is chiefly cha- 
racterized by the talent of expressing the 
ideas of other men, or the dictates of com- 
mon good sense, with peculiar beauty and 
energy. Hence he is an excellent transla- 
tor, a happy imitator, and a powerful in- 
structor on moral and critical topics. A 
performance of the latter kind was one of 

the 



90 LETTER VII. 

the products of his early youth, and prin- 
cipally contributed to the establishment of 
his poetic fame. This is his " Essay on 
Criticism/' a work abounding in valuable 
literary precepts, expressed generally with 
neatness, and often with brilliancy. In 
poetical merit it stands high among didac- 
tic pieces; yet it has many marks of juve- 
nility in the thoughts, and of incorrectness 
in the language; and by no means deserves 
to be proposed as a guide in the critical 
art, with that authority which some have 
ascribed to it. It is, however, well worthy 
of your perusal ; and you will recognise 
several of its maxims as having received 
the sanction of popular application. 

Pope assumes a still more important cha- 
racter as a didactic poet in his celebrated 
" Essay on Man." The subject of this 
work is no less than a philosophical inquiry 
into the nature and end of human beings : 
it therefore comprehends the fundamental 
principles both of morals, and of natural 
religion. As this work is written upon a 

systematic 



POPE. 91 

systematic plan, it is proper that the reader 
should endeavour to become master of it, 
and trace the design of the whole, and the 
mutual connexion of the parts. This is 
a serious task, and would be apt to prove 
irksome to one accustomed to read for mere 
amusement ; yet without the habit of oc- 
casionally fixing the attention upon a grave 
investigation, the mind will remain feeble 
and unsteady, incapable of any solid instruc- 
tion. Writings in prose, which have in- 
formation for their sole object, are, indeed, 
best fitted to engage attention of this kind ; 
nor can it be affirmed that Pope's excellence 
lay in the clearness and consistency of his 
argumentative processes. It will be suffi- 
cient if you peruse with care his own view 
of the general design of this piece, and his 
sketches of the contents of each book. 
Warburton's elaborate commentary, were 
you even capable of fully comprehending 
it, would be more likely to mislead than to 
instruct you, since his intention was rather 
to disguise, than fairly to represent, the 

system 



92 LETTER VII. 

system of his author. After all, the Es- 
say on Man is chiefly remembered for 
the beauty and sublimity of its detached 
passages, and the elevated sentiments of 
morality and religion which it inspires, 
and which stand independent of the par- 
ticular system in which they are inserted. 
You may justly admire the energetic con- 
ciseness of expression in the reasoning 
and didactic parts, which verify the au- 
thor's assertion, that he chose poetry as 
the vehicle of his thoughts, on account of 
the superior brevity with which he could 
deliver them in that form. For example, 
what combination of words could possibly 
give the sense of the following lines w r ith 
more precision or in less compass : 

Most strength the moving principle requires: 
Active its task, it prompts, impels, inspires. 
Sedate and quiet the comparing lies. 
Form'd but to check, deliberate, and advise. 
Self-love still stronger, as its objects nigh ; 
Reason's at distance, and in prospect lie : 
That sees immediate good by present sense; 
Reason, the future and the consequence. 

it 



pope. 93 

It was such passages that Swift had in 
his eye, w hen he said with the candour of 
true friendship, 

When Pope can in one couplet fix 
More sense than I cau do in six. 

On the other hand, his illustrations and 
amplifications are often given with all that 
splendour of diction, and richness of ima- 
gery, which distinguish those works in 
which he shows himself the most of a poet. 

From the Essay on Man, you will natu- 
rally proceed to the author's " Four Moral 
Essays" on the respective subjects of the 
Characters of Men; the Characters of 
Women ; and the Use of Riches ; the lat- 
ter occupying two epistles. In these you 
will find much acute observation of man- 
kind, much vivacity of remark and force 
of description, but not always justness and 
accuracy of thinking. You will also occa- 
sionally bedisgusted with a certain flippancy 
of expression, and still more with a taint of 
grossness of language, which, if not a per- 
sonal 



94 LETTEH VII. 

sonal rather than a national defect, would 
afford an unfavourable distinction between 
our literature in Anne's and George's reigns, 
and that of France in the age of Louis the 
Fourteenth. Boileau, whom Pope imitated, 
and who was not less severe in censure 
than he, is beyond comparison more deli- 
cate in his language. There is a kind of 
coarseness, consisting in the use of com- 
mon words, which conduces so much to 
the strength and vigour of style, that one 
would not wish to see it sacrificed to fasti- 
dious nicety; but Pope frequently goes 
beyond this, and betrays rather a conta- 
mination of ideas than a carelessness of 
phraseology. This remark, however, ap- 
plies more to some subsequent productions 
than to those at present before us. 

Of he particular epistles, you will pro- 
bably read with most interest that " On the 
Characters of Women." It is, I believe, 
generally reckoned more brilliant than cor- 
rect; more satirical than just. Whilst it 
assigns to your sex only two ruling pas- 
sions, 



pope. 95 

sions, " the love of pleasure and the love 
of sway/' it chiefly dwells, in the descrip- 
tion of individual characters, upon that 
mutability and inconstancy of temper which 
has been usually charged upon the female 
mind. By thus representing the ends as 
unworthy, and the means as inconsistent, 
it conveys the severest possible sarcasm 
against the sex in general. Woman, it 
seems, is even a at best a contradiction;" 
and his concluding portrait of the most es* 
tunable female character he can conceive, 
is but an assemblage of contrary qualities 
" shaken all together." Yet this outra- 
geous satire is almost redeemed by the 
charming picture he has drawn, (one would 
hope from the life,) of that perfection of 
good-temper in a woman, which is cer- 
tainly the prime quality for enjoying and 
imparting happiness : 

Oh! blest with temper, whose unclouded ray- 
Can make to-morrow cheerful as to-day ; 
She, who can love a sister's charms, or hear 
Sighs for a daughter with unwounded ear ; 

She, 



96 LETTER VII. 

She, who ne'er answers till a husband cools, 
Or, if she rules him, never shows she rules ; 
Charms by accepting, by submitting sways, 
Yet has her humour most when she obeys. 

I confess, this delightful portrait is mar- 
red by the concluding stroke, " Mistress of 
herself though china fall," which you may 
justly despise, as one of those flippant 
sneers which degrade this poet. 

The epistles on the use and abuse of 
riches are very entertaining. They abound 
with maxims of good-sense and taste, illus- 
trated by lively and poetical descriptions. 

A writer, so prone to satire in his moral 
works, might be expected to become a 
bitter satirist when professedly adopting 
that character. And, in fact, Pope had 
too much irritability of temper to be spa- 
ring in retaliation for a personal attack, and 
too honest an indignation against vice to 
treat it with lenity. Though he often af- 
fects an air of sportive humour in his 
strictures, yet he is habitually keen and 
caustic ; and sometimes, especially when 

vindicating 



POPE. 97 

vindicating himself, he exchanges plea- 
gantry for serious warmth. He has con- 
veyed a considerable porlion of his satire 
under the form of imitations of Horace. 
Like his friend Swift, he has not shackled 
himself with a close parallel in imitating 
that writer, but has followed his general 
train of ideas, improving his hints, and 
making excursions of his own as the occa- 
sion prompted. You must be content, as 
in the former case, to lose the humour of 
allusion in those pieces, and read them 
like original productions. 

The first of these imitations will show 
you how much in earnest he applied the 
censorial rod ; and certainly the profession 
of a satirist was never represented with so 
much dignity as in the lines thus intro- 
duced : 

What? arm'd for virtue when I point the pen, 
Brand the bold front of shameless guilty men; 
Dash the proud gamester in his gilded ear; 
Bare the mean heart that lurks beneath a star, &c 



Jf 



Tins 



98 LETTER VII. 

This passage, Dr. Warburton justly ob- 
serves, is not only superior to any thing in 
Horace, but equal to any thing Pope him- 
self has written. After such a lofty as- 
sumption, however, he should not have 
condescended to make his satire the wea- 
pon of party rancour or private resentment. 
There are very different degrees of merit 
in his imitations of Horace's satires and 
epistles, and they have so many references 
to persons and incidents of the time, that 
they cannot be understood without the aid 
of notes. 

The versifying of Donne's satires was 
one of his least happy attempts. If you 
read them (which is scarcely worth your 
while) you will pity a genius held down by 
the awkward fetters which he has volunta- 
rily assumed. 

The Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot, entitled 
" Prologue to the Satires," and the two 
dialogues styled " Epilogue," are per- 
formances of great spirit, in which his per- 
sonal feelings have given a keen edge to his 

sarcasm. 



pope. 99 

sarcasm. In the first, his character of Ad- 
dison under the name of Atticus has been 
universally admired for its polished seve- 
rity: how far it was morally justified by 
the provocation he had received, I shall 
not here inquire. Bishop Atterbury, it 
seems, was so well satisfied with it, that 
he expressed to the author his hope that 
he would not suffer such a talent to remain 
unemployed. Indeed, were the pen of sa- 
tire that " sacred weapon left for truth's 
defence," which he boasts it to have been 
in his hands, to wield it with skill would 
be as noble an employment of philanthropy 
as of genius. But Pope, though radically 
a lover of virtue, had too great an alloy of 
human infirmity in his character to act the 
part of a censor with uniform dignity and 
propriety. His personal and party preju- 
dices, and his peevish irritability, continu- 
ally warped him in the choice of objects for 
his attacks. Of this failing he has given a 
melancholy proof in the poem which next 
claims attention, the " Dunciad." 

That 



100 LETTER VII. 

That so great a poet as Pope, in the full 
maturity of his powers, should consecrate 
his best efforts to immortalizing in ridicule 
a set of enemies whom he aflccted utterly 
to despise, and most of whom, without his 
notice, would soon -have been consigned to 
oblivion, is a lamentable instance of the 
misapplication of genius, through want of 
that solid dignity of mind which philosophy 
alone can bestow. Although in this per- 
formance there is great beauty of versifi- 
cation, and much poetical description, I 
cannot recommend it to your perusal. Not 
only the scope of it is sufficient to inspire 
disgust, but there is so much grossness of 
imagery blended with its plan, that it is 
unfit for a female eye. How strange is it, 
that a writer so polished in his style, and 
who possessed the unusual -advantage of 
familiar intercourse with the best company 
(as we are willing to suppose it to be), 
should have fallen into a vitiation of taste 
which could be expected only in the lowest 
class of authors ! The apologists of Pope 

lay 



POPE. 101 

lay the fault to his intimacy with Swift ; 
and possibly the admirers of Swift would 
accuse Pope : it cannot be doubted , how- 
ever, that in this particular, as well as in 
their arrogant contempt of cotemporary 
writers, they spoiled each other. The two 
latter books of the Dunciad are tolerably 
free from this contamination ; but from 
their subject they are intelligible only to 
readers well versed in the literature of that 
period. 

The smaller and miscellaneous poems of 
this writer I shall commit without remark, 
to your judgment and discretion. There is 
one production, however, which is such a 
master-piece in its kind, that I would 
point it out to your particular attention. 
This is his " Prologue to Cato." Pro- 
logues to plays are singular compositions, 
of which the proper character is scarcely 
to be determined by the practice of writers. 
Those of Dry den, which were famous in 
their day, are generally attempts at licen- 
tious wit or petulant satire. His example 

was 



102 LETTER VII. 

was imitated ; and scarcely any thing grave 
or dignified had been offered to the public 
in this form, till Pope, inspired by the no- 
ble subject of Addison's tragedy, composed 
this piece, which not only stands at the 
head of all prologues, but is scarcely sur- 
passed in vigour of expression and eleva- 
tion of sentiment by any passage in his 
own works. 

I now close my long letter ; and remain, 

Yours, &c. 



LETTER 



YOtWG. 10; 



LETTER VIII. 



As one of our latest subjects was satire, 
I shall now, by way of comparison, direct 
you to another satirist of considerable note, 
of whom, however, we shall probably have 
more to say under another class. This 
is Dr. Young, a cotemporary of Pope, 
and one of the poetical constellation of 
that period. This author has left us, un- 
der the general head of " Love of Fame, 
the universal Passion," seven satires, in 
which he illustrates by example this as- 
sumed principle of human conduct. Like 
all other theorists on the mind, who aim at 
simplicity in their explanation of the varie- 
ties of human character, he has laid more 
stress upon his fundamental principle them 
it will properly bear ; and in many of the 
portraits which he draws, the love of fame 

can 



104 LETTER VIII. 

can scarcely be recognised as a leading 
feature. In reality, Young was a writer 
of much more fancy than judgment. He 
paints with a brilliant touch and strong 
colouring, but with little attention to na- 
ture; and his satires are rather exercises 
of wit and invention than grave exposures 
of human follies and vices, fie, indeed, 
runs through the ordinary catalogue of 
fashionable excesses, but in such a style of 
whimsical exaggeration, that his examples 
have the air of mere creatures of the ima- 
gination. His pieces are, however, enter- 
taining, and are marked with the stamp of 
original genius. Having much less ego- 
tism than those of Pope, they have a less 
splenetic air ; and the author's aim seems 
to be so much more to show his wit, than 
to indulge his rancour, that his severest 
strokes give little pain. 

It has been observed, that Young's sa- 
tires are strings of epigrams. His sketches 
of characters are generally terminated by 

a pointy 



YOUNG. JOS 

a point, and many of his couplets might 
be received as proverbial maxims or sen- 
tences. Such are the following : 

Men should press forward in fame^s glorious chace; 
Nobles look backward, and so lose the race. — 

There is no woman where there 's no reserve, 
And 'tis on plenty your poor lovers starve. — 

1 he man who builds and wants wherewith to pay, 
Provides a home from which to run away. — 

A common figure of speech with him is 
the antithesis, where two members of a 
sentence, apparently in opposition to each 
other, are connected by a subtle turn in 
the sense. Thus, 

And satirise with nothing but their praise. — 
'Tis inhumanity to bless by chance. — 
A shameless woman is the worst of men. — 
Because she's right, she's ever in the iuro?ig. — 

With wit, or the association of distant 
ideas by some unexpected resemblance, he 
abounds. Almost every page affords in- 
stances 



106 LETTER VIII. 

stances of his inventive powers in this re- 
spect ; some, truly beautiful ; others, odd 
and quaint. I shall produce one as a spe- 
cimen, which you may classify as your 
judgment shall direct: 

Like cats in airpumps, to subsist we strive 
On joys too thin to keep the soul alive. 

There is little of the majestic or digni- 
fied in Foung's satires ; not that he was 
incapable of sublimity, but because the 
view he took of men and manners gene- 
rally excluded it. Yet his account in the 
seventh satire of the final cause of that 
principle, the love of fame, is introduced 
by some very noble lines, which Pope 
could scarcely have surpassed : 

Shot from above, by heav'n's indulgence, came 
This generous ardour, this unconquer'd flame, 
To warm, to raise, to deify mankind, 
Still burning brightest in the noblest mind. 
By large-soul'd men, for thirst of fame renown'd, 
Wise laws were fram'd, and sacred arts were found : 
Desire of praise first broke the patriot's rest, 
And made a bulwark of the warrior's brea.-t. 

Ttie 



YOUNG. 107 

The purpose of the passage, indeed, is 
to offer incense at the shrine of royalty ; 
for Young bestowed adulation as largely as 
censure, and always with a view to his in- 
terest; in which he is disadvantageous^ 
distinguished from Pope. Two meaner 
lines will not easily be found than the fol- 
lowing in his praise of queen Caroline : 

Her favour is diffused to that degree, 
Excess of goodness ! it has beam'd on me. ~ 

These are at the close of his second satire 
on women ; for his politeness did not pre- 
vent him from employing the lash with 
even peculiar force on the tender sex. I 
think, however, you will feel yourself lit- 
tle hurt by these attacks ; for his ridicule 
consists in presenting a series of carica- 
tures, drawn rather from fancy than obser- 
vation ; and he does not treat the whole 
sex with that contempt which is perpetu- 
ally breaking out in the writings of Pope 
and Swift. 

Before you, for the present, lay down 

this 



108 LETTER VIII. 

this author, I will desire you to peruse a 
piece of descriptive poetry, in which he 
has shown himself master of a very dif- 
ferent style. This is his " Paraphrase on 
Part of the Book of Job/' a composition 
in its original the most sublime of those 
sacred writings which it accompanies, 
though y as in all other Hebrew poetry, its 
grandeur is allied to obscurity. Young 
has made little addition to the primitive 
imagery, but has rendered it more clear 
and precise, while it retains all its force 
and splendour. The descriptions are not 
always accurate, and the language some- 
times borders upon extravagance ; but his 
object was poetical effect, and this he has 
produced in an uncommon degree. Thus, 
after his highly wrought picture of the lion 
in his nightly ravages, he fixes and con- 
centrates the impression of terror, by the 
figure of the flying shepherd, who 

.... shudders at the talon in the dust. 

This is a stroke of real genius ! 

Having 



ELEGIAC VERSE. 109 

Having now made you acquainted with 
some of the best specimens of rhymed 
verse, in heroic and familiar poetry ; before 
we take a temporary leave of rhyme, I 
shall present it to you in a form of frequent 
use in English poetry, chiefly in connec- 
tion with a particular class of topics. That 
kind of measure in which the heroic line 
of ten syllables is disposed in stanzas of 
four verses, of which the rhymes are placed 
alternately, is usually termed the elegiac. 
This name is given it, because it has been 
thought peculiarly suited to theserious and 
pathetic strain of elegy. Formerly, in- 
deed, long poems of the epic or narrative 
kind were often composed in this measure; 
but although it is not deficient in majesty, 
the uniformity of a perpetually recurring 
stanza appeared tiresome and languid in a 
performance of considerable length. The 
necessity, too, of filling up the four lines 
either with a single -sentence, or with simi- 
lar and connected clauses, was found an 
obstacle to the rapidity of animated narra- 
tion* 



J 10 LETTER VIII. 

tion, and favoured the insertion of trifling 
and superfluous matter. This effect is less 
injurious where the subject is of the senti- 
mental kind; yet it must be acknow- 
ledged , that even here, the expression of 
strong and varied emotion does not well 
comport with the slow and even march of 
the elegiac stanza, which is better adapted 
to the tender and the pensive than to the 
impassioned. 

The " Love-Elegies" of Hammond are 
among the happiest of this class of com- 
positions, both in respect to their style, 
and their turn of thought. The latter, 
indeed, is almost entirely borrowed from 
Tibullus, a Roman poet, the most admired 
of the elegiac writers in his language. A 
classic reader would find much to commend 
in the ease with which he has transfused 
the beauties of the original into English, 
and the skill he has shown in forming new 
compositions out of its detached and trans- 
posed passages. He has, however, under- 
gone some heavy censure for adopting so 

lars-e 



HAMMOND. Ill 

large a share of the rural imagery and hea- 
then mythology of Tibullus, which, being 
with respect to himself purely fictitious, 
impairs the reality of his assumed character 
of a lover. And it is true, that his elegies 
have the air of being the elegant exercises 
of an academic, rather than the effusions 
of a heart touched with a real passion. 
But there is something in the simplicity of 
pastoral life so sweetly accordant with the 
tender affections, that the incongruity of 
times and manners is easily pardoned, and 
genuine feelings are excited under feigned 
circumstances. I am persuaded that, with- 
out criticising too deeply, you will receive 
true pleasure from the perusal of these 
pieces, especially from that in which a 
picture is drawn of connubial love in a 
country retreat, (Elegy xin.) with circum- 
stances only a little varied from those 
which might really take place in such a 
situation among ourselves. It is the En- 
glish farmer who speaks in the following 
stanza : 

With 



112 LETTER VIII. 

With timely care I'll sow my little field, 
And plant my orchard with its master's hand ; 
Nor blush to spread the hay, the hook to wield, 
Or range my sheaves along the sunny land. 

He appears afterwards under a more re- 
fined form, but still suitable enough to a 
ferme ornce : 

What joy to wind along the cool retreat, 
To stop and gaze on Delia as I go ! 
To mingle sweet discourse with kisses sweet, 
And teach my lovely scholar all I know ! 

I could point out to you another "elegy 
of Delia" on the Tibullian model, writ- 
ten by one of your sex whom you love 
and honour; which, with equal tenderness, 
is more purely an English composition : 
but happily it has not yet the claim to be 
quoted among those pieces which are sanc- 
tioned by posthumous fame. 

Farewell ! 



LETTER 



BLANK VERSE. 1 1.5 



LETTER IX. 



Hitherto, my dear Pupil, we have view- 
ed English verse with the accompaniment 
of rhyme. The device of marking the 

ends of lines with the recurrence of similar 
sounds, unknown to Greek and Latin po- 
etry, was introduced in those periods when 
the Roman empire was overrun by the 
barbarous tribes of the North, and true 
taste gave way to puerility and caprice. 
The modern languages, in their gradual 
progress to refinement, retained an orna- 
ment which long use had rendered almost 
indispensable ; and to this day, rhyme is 
commonly admitted in the verse of every 
European nation, and to some is regarded 
as absolutely essential. The meanness of 
its origin, and the difficulties to which it 
subjects a writer, have, however, produced 
various attempts for emancipating poetry 
i from 



114 LETTER IX. 

from what was considered as a de^radin^ 
imposition ; and these attempts have in no 
country been so well supported as in Eng- 
land. The dramatic writers led the way 
in the disuse of rhyme ; undoubtedly, be- 
cause they found that more was gained by 
such an omission in approximating dia- 
logue to common speech, than was lost in 
disappointing the ear of an accustomed 
jingle. After the public had been taught 
to relish the noble passages of Shakespcar 
and his cotemporary tragedians in un- 
rhymed verse, it required no extraordinary 
courage to venture upon the same liberty 
in other compositions, where the elevation 
of the matter might divert the reader's at- 
tention from a degree of negligence in the 
form. At length, Milton wrote his Para- 
dise Lost in blank verse, and its reputation 
was established. But it is only in one kind 
of measure, the heroic, that the absence of, 
rhyme has obtained general toleration. Jn 
the shorter measures, and in those diver- 
sified by lines of different lengths, and 

complicated 



BLANK VERSE. 115 

complicated into stanzas, the practised ear 
has never been brought to acquiesce in the 
want of a gratification to which it has been 
accustomed. Indeed, some of these mea- 
sures, as the elegiac, are entirely dependent 
on the rhyme. 

There has been much discussion con- 
cerning the comparative merit of blank 
verse and rhymed couplets in the heroic 
measure, and it is not likely that different 
tastes will ever, by any process of reason- 
ing, be brought to agree on this head. It 
may be useful, however, to give a brief 
statement of the case. I have already 
mentioned, that this measure is formed of 
ten syllables, alternately short and long, 
with the occasional irregularity of two long 
or two short successively. This produces 
a modulation so simple, and so little dif- 
ferent from prose, that without some art 
in recitation, it is not easily distinguished 
to be verse. Moreover, as there is nothing 
to mark to the ear the tenth or terminating 
syllable but the rhyme; where that is omit- 
ted, 



116 LETTER IX. 

ted, measure, properly speaking, is en- 
tirely lost in the modern way of reading, 
which is directed solely by the sense, and 
makes no pauses but as indicated by the 
punctuation. If, indeed, a suspension of 
the sense is always made to coincide with 
the close of a line, the voice will mark it ; 
but it is universally agreed, that such a 
monotony is one of the greatest faults of 
blank verse, and that the skill of the com- 
poser is principally shown by his judicious 
variation of the pauses, so that they may 
fall upon all the different parts of the line 
in turn, though not in any regular order. 
But such a distribution cuts the matter 
into portions of unequal lengths; which 
renders it a mere fallacy of the mode of 
printing to assign any particular rneasnreio 
such versification. Try, for example, to 
reduce to ten-syllable lines the following 
passage of a great master of blank verse, 
Akenside : 

" Thee, Beauty, thee the regal dome, and 
thy enlivening ray the mossy roofs adore : 

thou, 



CLANK VERSE. 117 

thou, better sun ! for ever beamest on 
h' enchanted heart love, and harmonious 
wonder, and delight poetic." 

1 think, therefore, it must be acknow- 
ledged, that whatever gratification the ear 
may derive from the return of equal por- 
tions of syllables or combinations of sylla- 
bles, it is lost in the construction of our 
heroic verse without the aid of rhyme. 
All that is then left, is the melodious flow 
of the periods into which the sentences 
are divided, produced by a succession of 
such words as afford the al ternary of long 
and short syllables, judiciously broken by 
an intermixture of others. And the advo- 
cates for blank verse contend, that the un- 
limited variety of pauses consequent upon 
such an unfettered freedom of versification, 
is an advantage in point of melody, greatly 
surpassing the pleasure afforded by a jingle 
in the sound, which they stigmatize as a 
childish barbarism. As the only appeal 
in this case is to a well-exercised car, and 
to a taste cultivated by familiarity with the 

best 



118 LETTER IX. 

best models, it will be my object to enable 
you to judge for yourself on this, as on 
other poetical topics. I shall therefore 
now offer to your perusal a series of the 
most eminent writers of blank verse, in 
different manners, and on various subjects. 
Whatever the result be with respect to 
your general preference of this kind of 
verse, or that which has preceded it, I ex- 
pect that you will be led to relish what is 
most excellent in both. 

There is one circumstance of which I 
think it proper to apprize you, before you 
take up any of the authors I mean to re- 
commend. The writers of blank verse 
have been so sensible of their near ap- 
proach to prose in the versification, that 
they have been solicitous to give their lan- 
guage a character as different as possible 
from that of common speech. This pur- 
pose, while it has favoured loftiness and 
splendour of diction, has also too much 
promoted a turgid and artificial style, stif- 
fened by quaint phrases, obsolete words, 

and 



MILTON*. 119 

and perversions of the natural order of 
sentences. When the subject is some- 
thing appertaining to common life, this 
affected stateliness is apt to produce a lu- 
dicrous effect. Such has particularly been 
the case in the poems termed didactic, 
several of which have been written in un- 
rhymed verse, on account of the facility 
with which it is composed. I do not mean 
to put into your hands productions of an 
inferior class ; but you will find in some of 
those which enjoy deserved reputation, 
enough to exemplify the fault above men- 
tioned. 

As, in order to form your taste for ver- 
sification in rhymed heroics, I thought it 
right to bring you immediately to one of 
the masters in that mode of composition ; 
so I shall now direct you to one of the 
greatest poets, and at the same time of the 
most melodious composers in blank verse, 
that our language affords, the immortal 
Milton; and his " Mask ofComus" is 

the 



120 LETTER IX. 

the piece with which we will make a com* 
mericement. 

That kind of drama called a Mask, con- 
sisting of a fable in which the characters 
of antient mythology, or abstract qualities 
personified, arc the actors, frequently em- 
ployed the invention of Ben Jonson and 
others of our early dramatists, for the en- 
tertainment of the learned and somewhat 
pedantic times in which they lived. These 
pieces were almost solely addressed to the 
understanding and the imagination, and 
had scarcely any power of exciting the 
sympathetic feelings; they were therefore 
strongly discriminated from the common 
theatrical representations of human life 
rind manners, and range under the head of 
poems rather than of plays. Milton, who 
from his youth was animated with the ge- 
nuine fire of poetry, and whose mind was 
exalted by the noblest sentiments of philo- 
sophy, naturally adopted a species of com- 
position in which his fancy would have 

free 



MILTON. 121 

free scope, and at once gave it a perfec- 
tion beyond all former example. 

" Comus" is a moral allegory, founded 
upon a classical conception, but greatly 
improved both in its imagery and its mora- 
lity. It represents the triumph of virtue 
over lawless pleasure ; and the author de- 
serves high applause for the skill with 
which, after exhilarating the mind with the 
festal gaiety of Comus, and even assailing 
the reason with sophistical arguments in 
favour of licentiousness, he finally brings 
over the reader to the side of sobriety by 
the charms of poetic eloquence. The ex- 
alted and somewhat mystic strain of the 
philosophy, borrowed from the Platonic 
school, suits extremely the romantic cast 
of the fable,, and the high poetry of the 
description. As a recompense for the hu- 
miliation you may have felt on viewing the 
female character as pourtrayed by Pope and. 
Swift, you may justly pride yourself on 
the lustre thrown around it in its virgin- 
purity, by this superior genius, lie soars, 

indeed, 



122 LETTER IX. 

indeed, into the region of fiction, but it- 
is fiction with the base of reality : 

Hence had the huntress Dian her dread bow, 

Fair silver-shafted queen, for ever chaste, 

Wherewith she tamed the brinded lioness, 

And spotted mountain -pard, bui set at nought 

The frivolous bolt of Cupid : Gods and men 

FearM her stern frown, and she was queen o' th' woods. 

What was that snaky-headed Gorgon shield 

That w r ise Minerva wore, unconquer'd virgin, 

Wherewith she freez'd her foes to congeal'd stone. 

But rigid looks of chaste austerity, 

And noble grace, that dash'd brute violence 

With sudden adoration, and blank awe ? 

No one can peruse this piece without 
being sensible of an elevation of soul 
which, for a time, lifts it above the allure- 
ments of sensuality, and sanctifies all its 
emotions. That it was composed for the 
domestic representation of a family of high 
rank, is a circumstance truly honourable 
to the manners of the age. The splendour 
of poetry displayed in it was scarcely ex- 
ceeded by the after-exertions of Milton 
himself; but with respect to the versifica- 
tion, 



MILTON. 123 

lion, it may be observed, that he had not 
yet attained the free and varied melody of 
his maturer productions. The pause for 
many successive lines falls upon the last 
syllable, producing that monotony, which 
it is the happiest privilege of blank verse 
easily to avoid. The measure is occasion- 
ally changed to that of seven or eight syl- 
lables with rhyme, the sprightliness of 
which well accords with the character of 
Comus addressing his crew, and with the 
aerial nature of the Attendant Spirit. Some 
lines in this measure are remarkable exam- 
ples of the consonance of sound with 
sense: 

Midnight Shout and Revelry, 
Tipsy Dance and Jollity : &c. 

Of this excellence you will meet with 
many more instances in the two poems 
which were the next productions of our 
author, and which I recommend to your 
perusal by way of interlude before you pro- 
ceed to the serious study of his great 

heroic 



124 LETTER IX. 

heroic performance. These are the very- 
popular pieces U L' Allegro" and "II Pense- 
roso," meant as contrasted portraits of 
the cheerful and the contemplative man, 
accompanied with the scenery proper to 
each. The animated strain of the verse, 
the variety and beauty of the imagery, 
and the soul of sentiment by which they 
are inspired, render them perhaps the 
most captivating pieces of the descriptive 
kind that all poetry affords. They are 
read with renewed delight till they are in- 
delibly imprinted on the memory ; and 
they have given birth to numerous imita- 
tions, several of which possess consider- 
able merit. On a critical examination, 
the attention should be directed to the con- 
formity of the scenery and circumstances 
of each piece, to the affection respectively 
intended to be excited ; namely, innocent 
mirth, and elevated seriousness. In this 
view you will find them presenting a dou- 
ble set of pictures, so well characterised, 
that there never can be a doubt to which 

series 



MILTON. ]2j 

series th£y individually belong. Jf, indeed, 
the observation of Jessica in Shakespear 
be just, (" I'm never merry When I hear 
sweet music,") the " soft Lydian aire'* 
and u melting voice tkrough mazes run- 
ning,'' are somewhat misplaced as one of 
the pleasures of L'AUegro, though he 
might be consistently delighted with the 
" merry bells" and " jocund rebecs." But 
as you are a practitioner in this art, I leave 
you to determine the disposition of mind 
with which the different strains of music 
arc accompanied. 

If, in casting your eye through Milton's 
smaller pieces, you should be attracted to 
his Monody of " Lycidas," you will meet 
with a poem of a peculiar cast, concern- 
ing which you will probably find it difficult 
to fix your judgment. Tributes of sor- 
row to the memory of the dead under the 
fictitious form of pastoral were at that time 
very common, and they have been justly 
censured by Dr. Johnson and other for 
that want of reality which almost entirely 

destroys 



126 LETTER IX. 

destroys their interest. In this piece, the 
ecclesiastical state of the country at that 
period is allcgorically shadowed out under 
the pastoral fiction, and the writer has in- 
dulged his religious zeal while lamenting 
his friend. Moreover, it borrows its form 
from classical imitation, and abounds in 
allusions drawn from that source, The 
constructions are also occasionally harsh, 
and the language obscure. All these cir- 
cumstances will deduct from your pleasure 
in reading it; yet there are passages in 
which I think you cannot fail to recognise 
the master-hand of a true poet. 

I should now proceed to " Paradise 
Lost," but it will be proper to allow you a 
pause before entering upon so dignified a 
subject. Adieu then for the present. 

Yours, &c. 



LETTER 



EPIC POETRY 127 



LETTER X. 



It will give you an exalted idea of the rank 
epic poetry holds amidst the productions 
of human genius, to be told, that there 
are scarcely half a dozen compositions of 
this class which have commanded an ad- 
miration unlimited by age or country. I 
believe, indeed, that strict poetical ortho- 
doxy admits in the list of capital epic 
poems no more than the Iliad of Homer, 
the Eneid of Virgil, the Jerusalem Deli- 
vered of Tasso, and the Paradise Lost of 
Milton. It might be suspected that the 
admission of the two moderns into the 
favoured number was the work of national 
partiality: but enlightened Europe has 
long concurred in paying this honour to 
the Italian, whose language has been suf- 
ficiently familiar to the votaries of polite 
literature in different countries, to render 

them 



128 LETTER X. 

them adequate judges of his merit. With 
respect to the Englishman, it cannot be 
denied that his own countrymen were till 
a late period almost exclusively the heralds 
of his fame: but the increasing prevalence 
of the English language, and reputation 
of its writers, upon the continent, have 
produced a very extended impression of 
his superior genius ; and his peculiar cha- 
racter of the sublimest of poets is acknow- 
ledged in Italy and Germany as much as 
in liis own country. 

The " Paradise Lost" is founded upon 
the history of the Fall of Man as recorded 
in the book of Genesis, to which Milton 
has closely and literally adhered as far as it 
would serve him as a guide. His additions 
chiefly relate to that interference of supe- 
rior agents which constitutes the machinery 
of the poem, and which his own fancy 
has erected upon the groundwork of an 
obscure tradition concerning a defection of 
the angelic host, headed by Satan, and 
terminating in the expulsion cf the rebels 

from 



MILTON. 129 

from the celestial mansions. It is peculiar 
to this poem 5 that what in others consti- 
tutes only an appendage to the story, here 
forms the principal subject ; for, as it was 
impossible that the adventures of a single 
pair of human beings in their state of sim- 
plicity should furnish matter for copious 
crnd splendid narration, it was necessary 
for the poet to seek elsewhere for the great 
fund of epic action. He has therefore 
exercised his invention in forming a set of 
superhuman personages, of opposite cha- 
racters, to whom he has adapted appro- 
priate scenery, and whom lie has employed 
in operations suited to their supposed na- 
ture. Thus he has been borne in the 
regions of fancy to a height, never before 
reached by a poet; for the most ardent 
imagination can frame no conceptions of 
novelty and sublimity which may not find 
scope in scenes where the mightiest of 
created beings, and even the Creator him- 
self, are actors, and where the field of 
action is the immensity of space, and the 
k regions 



ISO LETTER X. 

regions of heaven, hell, and chaos. At 
the same time, the plan of the work pro- 
Tides an agreeable repose to the mind fa- 
tigued by the contemplation of dazzling 
jvonders, in occasional descents to a new 
world, fresh in youthful beauty, and as 
yet the abode of peace and innocence* 
Milton's genius has been supposed best 
suited to the grand and elevated, chiefly 
because his subject was most fertile in 
images and sentiments of that class; but 
his pictures of Paradise display ideas of 
the graceful and beautiful, which, perhaps, 
no poet has surpassed. 

The excellencies and defects of Paradise 
Lost have occupied the pens of so many 
able writers, that I think it unnecessary to 
detain you with any minute discussion of 
them. You may find some very entertain- 
ing papers of Addison in the Spectator 
upon this subject, and some masterly cri- 
ticism by Dr. Johnson in his life of Milton 
prefixed to the edition of English Poets. 
I shall, however, make a few general ob- 
servation 



MILTON. 131 

servations in order to prepare you for the 
perusal. 

It is reckoned essential to every epic 
poem to have a hero, one on whom the 
principal interest of the reader is fixed on 
account of qualities and deeds which ex- 
cite admiration. Who is the hero of Pa- 
radise Lost ? It has been invidiously an- 
swered — Satan! and certain it is, that as 
far as courage to dare, fortitude to endure, 
wisdom to plan, vigour to execute, inviola- 
ble fidelity to a party, and a mind unsub- 
dued by change of fortune, are heroic qua- 
lities, he has no competitor in the poem. 
The angelic host are precluded from the 
exertion of these virtues by a consciousness 
of that support from almighty power which 
assures them of victory in the contest ; nor 
are they, in fact, subjected to any trials 
which can exalt them by successful resist- 
ance. Adam, whose weakness is the cause 
of the great catastrophe, has still less pre- 
tension to heroism, although the poet has 
thrown about him as much dignity as cir- 
cumstances 



132 LETTER X. 

cumstances allowed, and has taken especial 
care to assert his superiority to his frail 
consort. If Satan, however, is made an 
object of admiration on account of his great 
qualities, the cause in which they are ex- 
erted renders him detestable; and he loses, 
in the progress of the poem, all the splen- 
dour with which he was invested at the 
commencement. It is, indeed, a poetical 
fault of the piece, that a character once so 
conspicuous in it, should sink to insignifi- 
cance and contempt before the conclusion. 
But Milton never forgets his mam purpose 
of inculcating pious and virtuous senti- 
ments, and to this, every other considera- 
tion is sacrificed. 

It is in conformity with the practice of 
other epic poets, that a large part of the 
narrative in the Paradise Lost consists of a 
retrospective view of preceding transac- 
tions, given in the way of information by 
one of the personages. I know not whe- 
ther, to a plain reader, unbiassed by autho- 
rity, such a deviation from the natural order 

of 



M1LT0&. 133 

df events would prove agreeable. It cer- 
tainly tends to produce a confusion of ideas* 
which is scarcely rectified till the story has 
become familiar by a second perusal. Yet 
there is a spirit and animation in breaking 
at once into the midst of the action at some 
important period, that perhaps more than 
compensates this inconvenience; and the 
precipitation of the fallen angels into their 
infernal prison is a momentous point of the 
history which affords a favourable opening. 
The anticipation of future events con* 
tained in the visionary prospect offered to 
Adam of his posterity, is also authorised 
by the practice of other poets ; and is em- 
ployed to relieve the languor consequent 
upon the completion of the great incident 
of the piece. It gives scope to some fine 
description ; yet I confess it seems to me 
too much to infringe the uniformity of the 
design, and to disturb the imagination by 
mixing the turbulence of the after-world 
with the quiet and solitary scenery of 
Paradise. 

In 



13b LETTER X. 

In the language of Milton you will find 
much to distinguish it from any poetic 
style with which you have hitherto been 
conversant. On a fund of simplicity are 
ingrafted bold and lofty figures, antique 
phrases, singularities of construction and 
position, the general effect of which is to 
give it an air of remoteness from common 
and prosaic use, and to appropriate it to 
solemn and elevated topics. It abounds in 
Latinisms, which you will discover by their 
deviation from the vernacular idiom, aid 
will not have prejudice enough to admire. 
It has also a strong infusion of scripture 
phraseology, the associations of which ren- 
der it peculiarly suited to his subject. It 
is not unfrequently obscure, through learn- 
ed affectation and studied brevity ; but, up- 
on the whole, it is nervous, rich, and ex- 
pressive. 

In point of versification, it is agreed, that 
whatever can be done with blank verse to 
produce melody, variety, and consonanc e 
of sound with sense, has been effected in 

. a supreme 



MILTON, 133 

a supreme degree by Milton in this per- 
formance. You will particularly remark, 
that it is rare to meet with two contiguous 
lines which have corresponding pauses ; and 
that the termination on the tenth syllable 
occurs with no greater frequency than is 
necessary to mark the prevailing measure. 
There is a considerable intermixture of lines 
so imperfectly versified that they are scarcely 
distinguishable from prose. It is probable 
that the author sometimes designed these 
irregularities, as productive of some effect 
correspondent to the subject ; but they may 
often be more justly attributed to that 
negligence which is so apt to intrude in a 
long work, and which the poet's infirmity 
of blindness rendered almost unavoidable. 
I confess, that even the authority of Milton 
would make me unwilling to admit that 
discords are ever necessary to prevent the 
ear from being satiated with the melody of 
our blank verse ; and I conceive that change 
in the pauses will produce all desirable va- 
riety of modulation, without any infraction 
of the rules of so lax a metre. 

The 



136 LETTER X. 

The perusal of Paradise Lost has hem 
represented by some of its most magnifi- 
cent eulogists rather as a task than a plea- 
sure. Accomplish this task, however, once 
with attention. Make yourself mistress of 
the whole plan of the work : endeavour to 
understand all the classical and theological 
allusions in it as far as notes will explain 
them to you, and for that purpose pro- 
vide yourself with Newton's edition, or tiny 
later one equally furnished with explana- 
tions : mark in your progress the passages 
that most strike and please you :- — and then 
assure yourself that you are possessed for 
life of a source of exquisite entertainment, 
capable of elevating the mind under de- 
pression, and of recalling the taste from a 
fondness for tinsel and frivolity, to a re- 
lish for all that is solidly grand and beau- 
tiful. 

When you have gone through the Pa- 
radise Lost, you will probably feel little 
inclination directly to undertake the " Pa- 
radise Regained;" and indeed I would re- 
commend the interposition of some other 

author 



MILTON. 137 

author before you take up the resembling, 
but inferior, work of the same poet. I 
shall here, however, in order to preserve a 
continuity of subject, subjoin a few ob- 
servations on this production of Milton's 
declining years. 

Paradise Regained was written as a theo- 
logical supplement to Paradise Lost, and it 
bears every indication of its subordinate 
character. It is grave and argumentative* 
little enlivened by flights of fancy or in- 
teresting situations. It has more of dia- 
logue than action, for the latter is com- 
prised in one event, the temptation of 
Christ in the wilderness; in which, the 
only two persons concerned are so unequal 
in dignity, that no doubt can ever arise as 
to the result. The versification of the poem 
is still more careless than that of the most 
neglected parts of the former work ; and 
the diction is frequently flat and unani- 
mated. Yet it contains many pleasing 
sketches of rural scenery ; and its pictures 
of the three capitals, Rome, Athens, and 

Ctesiphonj 



138 LETTER X. 

Ctesiphon, are unrivalled in that species of 
descriptive poetry. Many of its moral 
sentences are likewise worthy of being re- 
tained, if you can separate them from the 
general mass of theological matter. I do 
not mean to insinuate that moral duties are 
best considered apart from religious prin- 
ciples ; but Milton's system of divinity is 
not perhaps the most rational to which you 
miffht be directed. Yet it would not be 
easy to find a passage of purer theology, 
than that which he gives as the reply of 
our Saviour to Satan's defence of the love 
of glory, on the ground that God himself 
requires and receives glory from all na- 
tions : 

And reason ! since his word all things produc'd, 
Though chiefly not for glory as prime end, 
But to show forth his goodness, and impart 
His good communicable to every soul 
Freely ; of whom what could he less expect 
Than glory and benediction, that is, thanks, 
The slightest, easiest, readiest recompense 
From them who could return him nothing else? 

The last work of our great poet is his 

" Samson 



MILTON. 139 

u Samson Agonistes," a dramatic com- 
position, but still less than his Comus 
adapted to a modern stage. In this piece 
lie has copied the severe simplicity of the 
Grecian theatre, whose u lofty grave tra- 
gedians," according to his own descrip- 
tion, taught " moral wisdom in senten- 
tious precepts." This mood best suited his 
declining years, in which fancy was cooled, 
whilst every serious impression was en- 
hanced, and had acquired additional auste- 
rity. It would be vain to expect either 
high poetry, or impassioned tenderness, in 
this performance; but what the author 
intended, he has well executed. He lias 
furnished a store of weighty philosophical 
and pious maxims, expressed with nervous 
brevity ; and has exhibited a striking exam- 
ple of patient endurance and resignation in 
adversity, accompanied with invincible cou- 
rage. Indeed, Milton had been brought 
up in no school of passive submission ; and 
it is easy to see to what events of his time 
he alludes in the following spirited lines : 

Oh! 



140 LETTER X. 

Oh ! how comely it is, and how reviving 

To the spirits of just men long oppress'd, 

When God into the hands of their deliverer 

Puts invincible might, 

To quell the mighty of the earth, th' oppressor. 

The brute and boisterous force of violent men, 

Hardy and industrious to support 

Tyrannic power, but raging to pursue 

The righteous, and all such as honour truth ! 

His main purpose in this piece was to 
inculcate inviolable attachment to country 
and true religion. It has indeed been said 
that one of his objects in it was to write 
a satire against bad wives; and it must be 
confessed that, in the person of Dalila, he 
has not spared them. He has also, still 
more directly than in Paradise Lost, main- 
tained the divine right of " despotic power" 
inherent in husbands; for it is not to be 
concealed, that Milton, whom you have 
seen almost deifying the female sex in his 
Comus, was in reality, both by principle 
and practice, a most lordly assertor of the 
superiority of his own. Though I would 
wish you to be impressed with an almost 

boundless 



MILTON. MI 

boundless admiration of the genius of this 
great man, and with high veneration of his 
piety and morals, yet I cannot desire you 
to regard him, in conformity with the re- 
presentation of a late panegyrical biogra- 
pher, as one of the most amiable of man- 
kind. 

Adieu I 



LETTER 



[ 142 ] 



LETTER XI. 

The age in which Milton wrote his prin- 
cipal poem, my dear Mary, was, on various 
accounts-, unfavourable to its reception. 
He had not only the misfortune of lying 
under the discountenance of the prevailing 
party on a political account, but the literary 
taste of the time was become totally ad- 
verse to that simple sublimity of language 
and sentiment by which he is characterized. 
What that taste was, will hereafter be con- 
sidered. It gave way at length to another 
school of poetry; while, in the meantime, 
Milton continued to stand alone, an in- 
sulated form of unrivalled greatness. His 
excellencies, however, gradually impressed 
the public mind, till he obtained that ex- 
alted place in posthumous fame among the 
English poets, which the revolution of 
another century has only served to render 

more 



JOHN PHILIPS. 143 

more secure and conspicuous. The period 
of imitators naturally commenced with 
that of his established reputation ; and, 
indeed, the reign of blank verse in gene- 
ral may be dated from the prevalent admi- 
ration of Milton's poetry. 

While the Miltonic style is fresh in 
your memory, it may entertain you to 
peruse one of those writers who professed 
to copy it with the greatest assiduity. Take 
up, then, the volume containing the works 
of John Philips. The first of his po- 
ems, entitled " The Splendid Shilling," is 
a noted piece of burlesque, in which the 
great poet's diction is happily employed in 
that grave humour, which consists in cloth- 
ing a ludicrous subject in lofty terms which 
have already acquired associations of an op- 
posite kind. It is unnecessary to point out 
the passages in which this comic resem- 
blance is most successfully supported : you 
will readily discover them, and will enjoy 
the harmless mirth this trifle was intended 
to excite. 

I shall 



1M LETTER XI.. 

I shall not urge you to read a second de- 
scription of the battle of Blenheim, after 
that in Addison's " Campaign." Poetry 
employed upon such topics can be expect- 
ed to interest only while the events are re- 
cent, unless they possess extraordinary me- 
rit, which is by no means the case with this 
of Philips. But his poem of " Cyder," 
which still maintains a respectable place 
among compositions of its class, may be 
recommended to your notice. 

You have already had examples of the 
poems called didactic in Gay's "Trivia," 
and Pope's "Essay on Criticism:" but the 
first of these is rather comic and burlesque 
than seriously instructive ; and the second 
is more employed in cultivating the taste, 
than in laying down rules for critical prac- 
tice. The poems strictly referable to this 
department are those in which verse is 
gravely and methodically applied to the 
teaching of some art or science; and of 
these, many instances both antient and mo- 
dern are to be met with. Of the former, 

one 



DIDACTIC POETRY. 145 

one of the most celebrated is the " Geor- 

gics," or Art of Husbandry, of Virgil, 
which is said to have been a task enjoined 
upon that poet for political purposes by 
the prime minister of Augustus. Mecaenas 
could scarcely be ignorant that real practi- 
cal instruction in agriculture would be bet- 
ter conveyed in plain prose: but it was 
probably his design to foster a taste for 
that useful art in the Roman nobility, by 
allying its precepts with the charms of 
poetry ; and in that view he could not have 
chosen his writer more happily. Some 
other didactic poems may have had a si- 
milar purpose of alluring readers to an 
useful pursuit, by first presenting it to the 
mind under an agreeable form ; but tor 
the most part, no other motive in com- 
posing works of this kind need be looked 
for, than that of gratifying the perpetual 
thirst for novelty, which, when more eli- 
gible topics are exhausted, directs the choice 
to the most unpromising, provided they 
are yet untouched. That the rules of a 
L practical 



146 LETTER XI. 

practical art are in fact little adapted to 
shine in verse, is sufficiently obvious, and 
it is no wonder that some of these didac- 
tic attempts sink into mere prose. Others, 
however, have been rendered entertaining 
and poetical, by the writer's judgment in 
two points; first, in choosing a subject con- 
nected with grand or beautiful objects in 
nature; secondly, in the skilful use of 
digressions. Of both these excellencies 
the Georgics above mentioned afford an 
example, which has been admired and 
imitated by many later poets. 

The art of making cyder is a branch of 
rural occupation not unpleasing in its gene- 
ral aspect, and associated with much agree- 
able imagery. It is the English vintage ; 
the product of a kind of culture perhaps 
not less grateful to the senses in all its ac- 
companiments than that of the grape. Po- 
mona is no mean rival to Bacchus, and a 
Herefordshire landscape may vie with the 
scenery of Burgundian hills or Andalusian 
plains. Philips, however, does not paint 

nature 



ARMSTRONG. 147 

nature like one deeply enamoured of her 
charms. His principal art is shown in his 
digressions, which are well-varied and skil- 
fully managed. The manner in which, 
after an excursion, he slides back to his 
orchard and cyder-press, has been much 
admired : in this, indeed, Virgil was his 
pattern. I do not, upon the whole, pre- 
sent Philips to you as a great poet ; but 
his " Cyder" will serve as a good specimen 
of the plan and conduct of a didactic poem, 
and will afford you some pleasing imagery. 
His imitation of Milton's style consists 
rather in copying some of his singularities 
of diction, and irregularities of versifica- 
tion, than in emulating his spirit and dig- 
nity. 

The " Art of Preserving Health," by 
Dr. Armstrong, is, in my opinion, a 
poem of a much superior rank. Its sub- 
ject will, perhaps, at first view, seem to 
you too professional, and you may feel as 
little inclination to study physic in verse as 
in prose. But the author is in this work 

more 



148 LETTER XI. 

more of a poet than of a physician, and you 
may be assured that his purpose was not to 
lay open to the uninitiated the mysteries of 
his art. In the view he takes of his sub- 
ject, it is connected with the grand sy- 
stem of the animal economy, both corpo- 
real and mental. The heads under which 
he arranges his matter will give you an 
idea of the variety of entertainment you 
may expect: they are, Air, Diet, Exercise, 
and the Passions. Of these, three at least 
are manifestly fertile of poetical imagery, 
and sufficiently detached from technical 
discussions. Armstrong was well qualified 
to make use of his advantages: he conceived 
strongly, and expressed himself with vi- 
gour. Sometimes, indeed, his strength is 
allied to coarseness, and more delicacy in 
avoiding objects of disgust would have been 
desirable : yet the mixture of this kind is 
not considerable ; and upon the whole, he 
has presented a succession of images which 
agreeably affect the imagination. Some 
passages are eminently poetical, and will 

bear 



ARMSTRONG. J49 

bear a comparison with similar ones in our 
most admired writers. One of these is his 
description of the "Reign of the Naiads/ 5 
introductory to his praise of water-drink- 
ing; 

I hear the din 

Of waters thund'ring o'er the ruin'd cliffs. 

What solemn twilight ! What stupendous shades 
Enwrap these infant floods ! Thro' every nerve 
A sacred horror thrills, a pleasing fear 
Glides o'er my frame: &c. 

Moral sentiment is occasionally inter- 
mixed with good effect, as it is neither ob- 
trusive nor tedious. Thus, the precepts 
of temperance happily introduce an ex- 
hortation to beneficence in imparting the 
stores of superfluous wealth.: 

Form'd of such clay as yours, 

The sick, the needy, shiver at your gates. 
Even modest want may bless your hand unseen, 
Tho' hush'd in patient wretchedness at home. 

The last of these lines is, to my percep- 
tions, one of the most exquisitely pathe- 
tic that I have ever met with. 

The 



150 LETTER XI. 

The fourth book is, from its subject, al- 
most entirely moral, and contains many 
valuable lessons for the conduct of life. 
The author moralizes, however, like a poet, 
and addresses the imagination as forcibly 
as the reason. His Picture of Anger is 
touched with the hand of a master : 

For pale and trembling, Anger rushes in, 
With falt'ring speech, and eyes that wildly stare, 
Fierce as the tiger, madder than the seas, 
Desperate, and rous'd with more than human strength- 

The diction of this poet is natural and 
unaffected, approaching to common lan- 
guage, yet warm and picturesque. Per- 
haps no blank verse can be found more 
free from the stiffness and constraint which 
so commonly characterize it. The versifi- 
cation bears a similar stamp of ease. With- 
out much art in. varying its cadences, it 
has the spontaneous melody w 7 hich liows 
from an exercised ear, and is never harsh 
or defective. 

I shall now put into your hands a spe- 
cimen of didactic poetry burthened with 

a topic 



DYER. 151 

a topic little favourable to the muse; in 
order that you may discern how far a poe- 
tic genius is able to free itself from such 
an incumbrance, and where it is forced to 
sink under it. This is " The Fleece" of 
Dyer, a poet of no mean fame, and who 
united the art of painting to that of verse. 
He gives the design of his work in these 
words : 

The care of sheep, the labours of the loom, . 
And arts of trade, I sing. 

The first of these heads is in some mea- 
sure associated with poetry by its connec- 
tion with pastoral life ; but the practice of 
a mechanic art, and the details of traffic, 
seem totally irreconcileable to the diame- 
ter of a species of writing which produces 
its effects by imagery familiar to the gene- 
rality of readers, or, at least, easily con- 
ceived by them. A view of human hap- 
piness is, indeed, always capable of afford- 
ing pleasure; but the condition of mankind 
in a commercial state is too remote from 

nature 



IDZ LETTER XI. 

nature and simplicity to produce those 
situations which poetry delights to repre- 
sent. An artisan silting at his work may 
be a very useful member of society ; but he 
makes an insipid figure in description, com- 
pared to the shepherd piping to his flock, 
or the huntsman ranging the forest. 

The spirit of Dyer's " Fleece" is truly 
didactic, and he has given it all the regu- 
larity which would have been expected in 
a prose work on the same subject. In his 
first book he is a breeder of sheep ; in his 
second, a wool-stapler; in his third, a 
weaver; and in his fourth, a merchant. 
In all of these capacities his object seems 
to be serious instruction, and he leaves no 
part of the topic untouched. He teaches, 
however, like a poet, and neglects no op- 
portunity of uniting entertainment with 
precept. He judiciously dwells most upon 
those parts which afford matter for senti- 
ment or poetical description ; and frequent- 
ly digresses into collateral paths which lead 
to scenes of beauty, and even of grandeur. 

He 



DYER. J 53 

lie has also the merit of much local and 
appropriate imagery , which I have reason 
to notice with gratitude, on account of 
the flowers which I have borrowed from 
his work for the decoration of my " Eng- 
land Delineated." Every where he shows 
himself a man of benevolent and virtuous 
principles, and a good patriot. You will 
be warmed with the praises of Britain in his 
first book; "Hail, noble Albion, &c. ;" and 
you will admire the dexterity with which 
he has turned to its advantage that humi- 
dity of its climate, which has been so often 
made a topic of splenetic reproach : 

round whose stem cerulean brows 

White-winged snow, and cloud, and pearly rain, 
Frequent attend with solemn majesty: 
Rich queen of Mists and Vapours ! these thy sons 
With their cool arms compress, and twist their nerve* 
For deeds of excellence and high renown. 



This passage, contrasted with Arm- 
strong's bitter philippic against the climate 
for the very same reason, curiously exem- 
plifies the different ways in which a cir- 

rum stance 



154? LETTER XI. 

cumstance may be considered by minds 
differently disposed. 

The work before us possesses great va- 
riety, but I will not affirm that it is calcu- 
lated to please all tastes. To many I ap- 
prehend it must appear essentially unpoe- 
tical in its subject; and the perpetual refe- 
rence to purposes of trade and commerce 
will, to some nice perceptions, give a 
taint of vulgarity to his highest-wrought 
descriptions. I shall leave you to take as 
much or as little of it as your inclination 
may prompt; and I shall not desire your 
further attention to a class of compositions 
which, after every effort, must remain the 
least inviting of the products of the pon- 
tic art. 

Before we dismiss this writer, let us take 
notice of the two other poems by his hand, 
which maintain a respectable place in the 
descriptive class. 

His u Grongar Hill" is perhaps the mdsf 
pleasing piece in the langnage, of those 
which aim at local description. No at- 
tempt. 



DYER. 155 

tempt, for the most part, is less successful, 
than that of imparting by words, distinct 
ideas of particular scenes in nature. The 
great features of wood, water, rock, moun- 
tain, and plain, may be brought before the 
imagination ; but it groups and figures them 
according to models already impressed on 
the memory, and the picture it forms with 
these materials has a very faint resemblance 
of the reality. Dyer has judiciously at- 
tempted no more than to sketch such a 
prospect as may be conceived to be in view 
from almost any elevated summit in a pic- 
turesque country ; and he has chiefly dwelt 
on circumstances of generality ; such as 
those on ascending a steep and lofty hill, 
in the following lines : 

Still the prospect wider spreads, 
Adds a thousand woods and meads, 
Still it widens, widens still, 
And sinks the newly risen hill. 
Now I gain the mountain's brow, 
What a prospect lies below ! &.C. 

It is not necessary to have climbed Gron- 

gar 



156 LETTER XI. 

gar hill, to feel the descriptive beauty of 
such a passage, or of most of the subse- 
quent imagery, which consists of objects 
common to all similar situations. In like 
manner, his moral reflections on the ruined 
castle which forms a distinguished object 
in the scene, are universally applicable ; as 
well as those on the course of the rivers, 
and of the optical delusions produced by 
distance. The facility with which the 
reader enters into the ideas, sensible and 
intellectual, of this piece, has, doubtless, 
been a principal cause of its popularity ; 
to which, its familiar style and measure, 
and its moderate length, have further con- 
tributed. 

The autiior has taken a loftier flight in 
his blank verse poem of " The Ruins of 
Rome," which is likewise a combination of 
the moral and the descriptive. Few themes, 
indeed, can be imagined more fertile of strik- 
ing imagery and impressive sentiment, than 
that of the decline of such a mighty seat 
of empire, still displaying in its relics the 

lineaments 



DYER. 157 

lineaments of its former grandeur. Dyer 
formed his draught on the spot, and ex- 
pressed with the pen what he had first 
copied with the pencil : hence his perform- 
ance abounds with touches of reality, which 
give it a spirit not to be found in pictures 
drawn from fancy or recollection. For, 
objects of so singular a kind as the ruins 
of antient art and magnificence must be 
seen to be adequately represented ; and no 
one, from his general stock of ideas, can 
figure to himself what bears the peculiar 
stamp of individuality. One might be cer- 
tain that such a description as the follow- 
ing was taken upon the spot : 

I raise 

The toilsome step up the proud Palatin, 

Thro' spiry cypress groves, and tow' ring pines 

Waving aloft o'er the big ruin's brows, 

On numerous arches rear'd ; and, frequent stopp'd. 

The sunk ground startles me with dreadful chasm, 

Breathing forth darkness from the vast profound 

Of ailes and halls within the mountain's womb. 

The historical allusions, and moral and 
political reflections, are accommodated to 

the 



158 LETTER XI. 

the scenery, but are sufficiently obvious. 
One of the most striking passages of this 
kind is that in which the poet indulges a 
strain of pensive meditation on 

The solitary, silent, solemn scene, 

Where Caesars, heroes, peasants, hermits lie. 

It appears to me that this performance 
lias not enjoyed its due share of reputation. 
The subject is peculiarly happy, and its 
execution must surely be allowed to display 
no common measure of poetical genius. 

Adieu ! 

Yours, &c. 



LETTER 



AKENS1DE. 159 



LETTER XII. 

otill keeping in the walk of blank verse ; 
I now, my clear Mary, offer to your peru- 
sal a poem, in which the art is employed 
in unfolding its own nature and origin. 
The " Pleasures of the Imagination" by 
Dr. Akenside is a piece of the philoso- 
phical or metaphysical kind, the purpose 
of which is to investigate the source of 
those delights which the mind derives from 
the contemplation of the objects presented 
to the senses by nature, and also from those 
imitations of them which are produced by 
the arts of poetry and painting. You have 
already had examples of the manner in 
which moral and theological argumentation 
ally themselves w ith poetry ; and perhaps 
the effect has been to convince you that 
reasoning and system-building are not the 
proper occupations of verse. If this be 

admitted 



160 LETTER XII. 

admitted as a general truth, an exception 
may be pleaded for reasonings of which 
poetry itself is the object ; especially if the 
positions advanced are made good rather 
by illustration, than by logical demonstra- 
tion. The work before us affords a proof 
of the justness of such an exception; for 
a more splendid poem, more replete with 
rich and lofty imagery, will not easily be 
found within the range of English compo- 
sition. It is true, a previous habit of spe- 
culation, and an acquaintance with the 
common theories of the human mind, are 
requisite for entering into it with a thorough 
relish, nor can it be fully comprehended 
without a close and attentive perusal. It 
it is not calculated, therefore, to become a 
favourite with cursory readers, who will 
always prefer the easy gratification afford- 
ed by narrative and descriptive poetry. I 
recommend it to you, however, as an in- 
structive exercise, which, in the first in- 
stance, will usefully employ the intellec- 
tual faculties, and will furnish your memory 
7 with 



AKENSIDE. 161 

with a store of exquisite passages, formed 
to dwell upon the mind after they have 
been well fixed by a clear view of the whole 
plan of which they are a part. It will be 
an useful preparation to read those papers 
of Addison, in the Spectator, on the Plea- 
sures of the Imagination, which have served 
for the groundwork of this poem, and 
which are very elegant and beautiful prose 
compositions. Akenside's own account of 
his design, and the heads of his books, 
should also be attentively perused. I do 
not fear the imputation of partiality in 
further recommending to you Mrs. Bar- 
bauld's critical essay on this poem, pre- 
fixed to an ornamented edition of it pub- 
lished by Cadell and Davies. You cannot 
meet with a guide of more acknowledged 
taste and intelligence. 

The versification of Akenside is perhaps 
the most perfect specimen of blank verse 
that the language affords. If it lias not 
the compass of melody sometimes attained 
by Milton, it is free from his inequalities. 
m Not 



J 62 LETTER XII. 

Not a line is harsh or defective, and the 
pauses are continually varied with the skill 
of a master. His diction is equally the re- 
sult of cultivation. It is rich, warm, and 
elegant ; highly adorned when the subject 
favours ornament ; chastely dignified at 
other times; but never coarse or negligent. 
It might, perhaps, be accused of stiffness, 
were his topics more allied to common 
life : but a philosophical disquisition may 
demand a language remote from vulgar 
use ; and his particular school of philoso- 
phy was accustomed to a stately phraseo- 
logy. His sentiments are all of the ele- 
vated and generous kind ; his morality is 
pure and liberal ; his theology simple and 
sublime. He was the perpetual foe of ty- 
ranny and superstition, and stands promi- 
nent in the rank of the friends of light and 
liberty. 

Another considerable performance of 
this author, also in blank verse, is his 
u Hymn to the Naiads." The character of 
one of the most classical poems in the 

English 



AKENSIDE. 163 

English language will perhaps but dubi- 
ously recommend it to } r our favour. In 
fact, it sounds the very depths of Grecian 
mythology; and a mere English reader 
may well be startled at the mystical solem- 
nity with which his " song begins. " 

First of things 
Were Love and Chaos. Love, the sire of Fate, 
Elder than Chaos. 

If, however, you will venture upon read- 
ing a piece with the chance of but half un- 
derstanding it, you may derive some fine 
ideas from this Hymn, which is a product 
of poetry as well as of erudition. 

The " Inscriptions" which follow are 
written upon the same classical model of 
lofty simplicity. They possess imagery and 
sentiment, but are too stiff and studied to 
interest the feelings. I shall reserve the 
" Odes" of Akenside for a future occa- 
sion. 

It would be strange if among the writers 
in blank verse an early place were not al- 
lotted 



164 LETTER XII. 

lotted to the well-known name of Thom* 
son. The " Seasons" of that amiable 
writer yields, perhaps, to no other English 
poem in popular iry ; and, being of the de- 
scriptive kind, would properly have been 
one of the first offered to your notice, had 
not a precedence been given to the compo- 
sitions in rhymed verse. It is the most 
considerable of all the poems which have 
description for their direct object ; for al- 
though the moral and religious lessons to 
be deduced from a survey of nature were 
probably before the author's mind when he 
fixed upon his plan, yet they are rather the 
improvements of his subject then an essen- 
tial part of it. The successive changes in 
the face of external nature, as modified by 
the changes of the year, are the proper ar- 
gument of his work. Each of the four 
Seasons, indeed, is a separate piece, having 
its distinct opening and termination ; and 
nothing appears to connect them into a 
general design but the concluding Hymn. 
They really, however, form a whole; for 

they 



THOMSON. 165 

they compose the natural history of the 
year ; a period marked out by astronomical 
laws for a complete circle of those inci- 
dents and appearances which depend upon 
the influence of the sun upon our earth. 
In all the temperate climates this revolution 
also has a similitude to that round of being 
which is comprehended in the life of man. 
The year may be said to commence its 
birth with the revival of nature from the 
torpidity of winter. The season of Spring, 
therefore, is its infancy and youth, in which 
it puts forth the buds and blossoms of fu- 
ture increase. The Summer is its man- 
hood, during which its fruits are successive- 
ly proceeding to maturation. The Autumn 
completes its maturity, collects its stores, 
abates its ardour, and at length delivers it 
to the chill decline and final extinction of 
Winter. In this parallel consists that per- 
sonification of the year which gives unity 
to its poetical history. The seasons ar- 
range themselves into natural order, like 
the acts of a well-constructed drama, and 

the 



166 LETTER XII. 

the catastrophe is brought about by an in- 
evitable cause. 

But although Thomson found the gene- 
ral outline of his work ready drawn to his 
hand, yet to fill it up adequately required 
both a copious stock of ideas, and judg- 
ment for selecting and disposing them. It 
also demanded in an eminent degree that 
warmth and force of painting which might 
give an air of novelty to objects for the 
most part familiar to his readers. Further, 
as a series of mere descriptions, however 
varied, could scarcely fail to tire in a long 
work, it was requisite to animate them by 
a proper infusion of sentiment. Man was 
to be made a capital figure in the land- 
scape, and manners were to enliven and 
dignify the rural scene. Nor would the 
character of this writer suffer him to forget 
the Great Cause of all the wonders he de- 
scribed. In his mind religion mingled it- 
self with poetic rapture, and led him from 
the glories of creation to the greatness of 
the Creator. All the changes of the year 

are 



THOMSON, 167 

are regarded by him but as cc the varied 
God ;" and this conception affords another 
point of union to the miscellaneous matter 
of the poem. 

It is an advantage of the laxity of Thom- 
son's plan, that it lays him under no obli- 
gation to enter into details of an unpoetical 
nature. Of natural pha3nomena or human 
occupations he is only bound to take such 
as sufficiently mark the revolving seasons ; 
and of these there is an ample choice capa* 
ble of being rendered striking and agree- 
able in description. He is not, like the poet 
of the Georgics, obliged to manure and till 
the soil before he paints the harvest waving' 
in the wind ; or, like Dyer, after the cheer- 
ful sheep-shearing scene, compelled to fol- 
low the wool into the comber's greasy shop. 
Art and nature lie before him, to copy such 
parts of their processes as are best fitted to 
adorn his verse. 

The proper scene of the Seasons is the 
poet's native island, and the chief fund of 
description is afforded by British views and 

manners. 



168 LETTER XII. 

manners. Yet he has not thought it ne- 
cessary to confine himself to these limits 
when any kindred subject suggested itself, 
capable of adding grandeur or beauty to 
his draughts. Thus he has exalted the 
splendour of his Summer by a picture of 
the climate and productions of the torrid 
zone ; and has enhanced the horrors of his 
Winter by prospects taken from the polar 
regions. He has also introduced many 
views of nature of a general kind, relative 
to the great system of the world, and de- 
rived from the sciences of astronomy and 
natural philosophy. These strictly apper- 
tain to his subject, as presenting the causes 
of those changes in the appearances of 
things which he undertakes to describe. 
The magnitude and sublimity of these con- 
ceptions elevate his poem above the ordi- 
nary level of rural description; whilst 
at the same time he has judiciously avoided 
any parade of abstruse speculation which 
might prove repulsive to the generality of 
his readers. So extensive is the range 

which 



THOMSON. 169 

which his subject fairly permits him to 
take, that there is little in his work which 
can properly be called digression. The 
most deserving of this title are his des- 
cants upon civil polity, and bis sketches 
of characters drawn from history, which 
have but a remote and forced connection 
with his peculiar topics. 

Thomson was one of the first of our 
poets who ventured upon minute and cir- 
cumstantial description. He viewed na- 
ture with his own eyes for the purpose of 
copying her; and was equally attentive to 
the beauty and curiosity of her smaller 
works, as to her scenes of awful grandeur 
and sublimity. His mind, however, seems 
most in unison with the latter, and he 
succeeds in his pictures, in proportion to 
their magnitude. His language also is best 
suited to themes of dignity : it is expres- 
sive and energetic, abounding in compound 
epithets and glowing metaphors, but in- 
clining to turgidity, and too stifFand stately 
for familiar topics. He wants the requisite 

ease 



170 LETTER XII. 

ease for narrative ; and his stories, though 
interesting from the benevolence and ten- 
derness of the sentiments, are told with- 
out grace or vivacity. He has only once 
attempted a scene of humour, and has en- 
tirely failed. In the art of versification 
he does not excel. His lines are monoto- 
nous, and afford few examples of pleasing 
melody. They are such blank verse as is 
composed with little effort, and indulges 
the indolence of the writer. 

But whatever may be the defects of this 
poem, it is one that can never cease to give 
delight as long as nature is loved and stu- 
died, and as long as liberal and dignified 
sentiments find sympathetic breasts. No 
poetical performance may more confidently 
be recommended to the juvenile reader, 
whose fondness for it is one of the most 
unequivocal marks of a pure and well-dis- 
posed mind. Make it the companion of 
your walks ; lay it beside you on the gar- 
den-seat; and doubt not that its perusal 
will always improve your sensibility to the 

charms 



THOMSON. 171 

charms of nature, and exalt your ideas of 
its great Creator. 

You will have discovered from the Sea- 
sons that Thomson was an ardent friend of 
civil liberty, and he lived at a time when 
writers of such a spirit met with distin- 
guished patrons. Thus doubly inspired, he 
devoted a large share of his exertions to the 
cause of freedom, and particularly com- 
posed a long work under the title of " Li- 
berty." As it is my present purpose to 
direct you solely in your poetical reading, 
I have no business to enjoin you a political 
task; and this piece of Thomson's is, in 
fact, little more than history in blank verse. 
Its sentiments are generous and soundly 
constitutional, and some of its pictures 
are well drawn; but it has more of the 
rhetorician than of the poet, and its gene- 
ral effect ts tediousness. His " Britannia" 
is a smaller work written for the purpose 
of rousing the nation to war — you will pro- 
bably pass it by. Nor can I much re- 
commend to you his " Poem on the Death 

of 



172 LETTER XII. 

of sir Isaac Newton," the sublime concep- 
tions of which are only to be comprehend- 
ed by one familiar with the philosophy of 
that great man, and to such an one would 
appear to no advantage. This may suffice 
for the blank verse compositions of Thom- 
son : we shall hereafter meet with him 
upon other ground. But I have given you 
enough to occupy your attention for some 
time; so, for the present, farewell! 



LETTER 



30MERVILLE. 173 



LETTER XIII. 



Somerville's poem of "The Chace" is 
another production in blank verse which , 
I think, will repay your perusal. The sub- 
ject, indeed, cannot be supposed highly 
interesting to a young lady, whose occu- 
pations and amusements have been properly 
feminine : but you may feel a curiosity to 
be informed what those delights are, which 
prove so captivating to our rougher sex ; 
and may receive pleasure from the new 
views of nature opened by the scenes here 
represented. Although this work assumes 
the didactic form, and the poet speaks of 
his " instructive song," yet I regard it as 
almost purely descriptive ; for it cannot be 
supposed that our sportsmen would deign 
to learn their art from a versifier, and the 
ordinary reader of poetry has no occasion 
for instruction on these points. I observe, 

however, 



174 LETTER XIII. 

however, that a prose " Essay on Hunt- 
ing," written by an able practitioner, makes 
large quotations from Somerville ; which I 
consider as a valuable testimony to his ac- 
curacy in description. 

You will probably pass lightly over the 
directions concerning the discipline of the 
kennel, and dwell chiefly upon the pictures 
of the different kinds of chace. These are 
wrought with a spirit which indicates them 
to be copied from reality, and by one 
who felt all the enthusiastic ardour which 
these pastimes are calculated to inspire. If 
you compare them with the corresponding 
draughts in Thomson's Seasons, you will 
perceive the difference between a cold re- 
flecting spectator, and an impassioned actor. 
Perhaps, however, you will be most en- 
tertained with the scene he has drawn from 
the description of travellers only, assisted 
by his imagination ; I mean his splendid 
view of a chace conducted with all the pa- 
rade of oriental magnificence, and of which 
the objects are some of the noblest of qua- 
drupeds. 



SOMERVILLE. 175 

drupeds. He has wrought this with much 
poetical skill, and it forms a striking va- 
riety in the piece. Indeed, there would be 
danger of his throwing his English pic- 
tures quite into the shade, did not the mi- 
nute and animated touches of the latter 
compensate for their want of grandeur. In 
his stag hunt he has decorated the canvas 
with the ladies of the court, who at that 
time were accustomed to partake in this 
diversion ; and though Thomson has repre- 
sented the exercise of the chace as incon- 
sistent with feminine softness, yet it would 
be a fastidious delicacy not to admire 

Their garments loosely waving in the wind, 
And all the flush of beauty in their cheek. 

The rapture with which this poet has re- 
peatedly described the music of the chace 
will probably give you a longing to hear 
such heart-cheering melody ; but much of 
its effect is owing to association, and would 
be lost upon one who did not follow it 
over hedge and ditch. I question, however, 

whether 



176 LETTER XIII. 

whether the most elaborate strains of mo- 
dern music could produce an effect so ani- 
mating as that represented in the following 
lines : 

winged zephyrs waft the floating joy 

Thro' all the regions near: afflictive birch 

No more the school-boy dreads : his prison broke, 

Scamp'ring he flies, nor heeds his master's call: 

The weary traveller forgets his road, 

And climbs th' adjacent hill-, the ploughman leaves 

Th' unfinish'd farrow ; nor his bleating flocks 

Are now the shepherd's joy: men, boys and girls 

Desert th' unpeopled village; and wild crowds 

Spread o'er the plain, by the sweet phrensy seiz'd. 

These are feats worthy of Orpheus him- 
self, and are related with a spirit congenial 
to the subject. The diction of Somerville 
is well suited to the topics which he treats. 
It is lively and natural, and free from the 
stiffness usually accompanying blank verse- 
His versification possesses the correctness 
and variety which denote a practised ear. 

There remains among the blank verse 
poems a very celebrated work, of a kind 
totally different from those which we have 

hitherto 



YOUNG. 177 

hitherto considered, the " Night Thoughts " 
of Dr. Young. The originality and high 
reputation of this performance undoubt- 
edly entitle it to the notice of all stu- 
dents of English poetry : yet I feel some 
hesitation in speaking of it to you in re- 
commendatory terms. Against any bad 
effect it might have upon your literary 
taste, I think you are sufficiently fortified 
by the number of excellent productions 
which have been submitted to your peru- 
sal ; but I cannot be so secure with respect 
to its influence upon your sentiments in 
more important points. " What ! (it will 
be said) can you doubt to put into the 
hands of a female pupil the admired work 
of the pious and seraphic Young ?" A short 
view of the spirit in which he wrote it, and 
the system upon which it is formed, wiil 
explain my doubts. 

The writer was a man of warm feeling, 

ambitious both of fame and advancement. 

lie set out in life upon an eager pursuit of 

what is chiefly valued by men of the world ; 

n attached 



178 LETTER XIII. 

attached himself to patrons, some of them 
such as moral delicacy would have shunned, 
and was not sparing in adulation. His re- 
wards, however, were much inferior to his 
expectations ; he lived, as he himself says, 
" to be so long remembered, that he was 
forgot," and he was obliged to bury his 
chagrin in a country parsonage. He also 
met with domestic losses of the most affect- 
ing kind, and he possessed little vigour of 
mind to bear up against misfortune. In 
this state he sat down to write his " Com- 
plaint," (for that is the other title of the 
Night Thoughts,) at a time when he was 
haunted with the " ghosts of his departed 
joys," and every past pleasure "pained him 
to the heart." His first object, therefore, 
is to dress the world in the colours of that 
u night" through which he surveyed it ; — 
to paint it as a scene 

Where's nought substantial but our misery; 
Where joy (it joy) but heightens our distress. 

In his progress he endeavours to pluck 

up 



YOUNG. 179 

up by the roots every comfort proceeding 
from worldly hopes or human philosophy, 
and to humble the soul to the dust by a 
sense of its own vileness, and the inanity 
of every thing terrestrial. This prepares 
the way for the administration of the grand 
and sole remedy for the evils of life — the 
hope of immortality as presented in the 
Christian revelation. His view of this 
scheme is of the most awful kind. He 
conceives a wrathful and avenging God, on 
the point of dooming all his offending, 
that is, all his rational, creatures to eter- 
nal destruction, but diverted from his pur- 
pose by the ransom paid in the suffer- 
ings and death of his Son. I do not take 
upon me to pronounce concerning the 
soundness of his theology; but so deep 
is the gloom it spreads over his whole 
poem, that, in effect, it overpowers the 
light of his consolation. There is a kind 
of captious austerity in all his reasonings 
concerning the things of this world, that 
charges with guilt and folly every attempt 

to 



180 LETTER XIII. 

to be happy in it. Every circumstance is 
dwelt upon that can image life as vain <md 
miserable; and lest any gladsome note 
should .cheer the transitory scene, he per- 
petually sounds in the ears the knell of 
death. Such a picture of this world, I am 
sure, is ill calculated to inspire love for iis 
Creator ; and I think it as little filled to 
foster the mutual charities of life, and put 
men in good humour with each other. 
What a contrast to the amiable theology 
of the Seasons ! 

I cannot wish therefore that the Night 
Thoughts should become your favourite — 
that you should ponder over it, and make 
it your closet companion. Yet, as a work 
of genius, it is certainly entitled to admi- 
ration ; and many of its striking sentences 
concerning the abuse of time, the vanity 
of frivolous pursuits, the uncertainty of 
human enjoyments, and the nothingness 
of temporal existence compared to eternal, 
are well worthy of being impressed upon 
the memory. No writer, perhaps, ever 

equalled 



YOUNG. 181 

equalled Young in the strength and bril- 
liancy which he imparts to those senti- 
ments which are fundamental to his design. 
He presents them in every possible shape, 
enforces them by every imaginable argu- 
ment, sometimes compresses them into a 
maxim, sometimes expands them into a 
sentence of rhetoric, sets them oif by con- 
trast, and illustrates them by similitude. 
It has already been observed, in speaking of 
his Satires, how much he abounds in an- 
tithesis. This work is quite overrun with 
them : they often occupy several successive 
lines ; and while some strike with the force 
of lightning, others idly gleam like a me- 
teor. It is the same with his other figures: 
some are almost unrivalled in sublimity ; 
many are to be admired for their novelty 
and ingenuity ; many are amusing only by 
their extravagance. It was the author's 
aim to say every thing wittily; no wonder, 
therefore, that he has often strayed into 
the paths of false wit. It is one of his 
characteristics to run a thought quite out of 

breath ; 



182 LETTER XIII. 

breaih; so that what was striking at the 
commencement, is rendered flat and tire- 
some by amplification. Indeed, without 
this talent of amplifying, he could never 
have produced a work of the length of the 
Night Thoughts from so small a stock of 
fundamental ideas. 

I cannot foresee how far the vivacity of 
his style, and the frequent recurrence of 
novel and striking conceptions, will lead 
you on through a performance which, I 
believe, appears tedious to most readers 
before they arrive at the termination. Some 
of the earlier books will afford you a com- 
plete specimen of his manner, and furnish 
you with some of his finest passages. You 
will, doubtless, not stop short of the third 
book, entitled " Narcissa," the theme of 
which he characterises as 

Soft, modest, melancholy, female, fair. 

It will show you the author's powers in 
the pathetic, where the topic called them 
forth to the fullest exertion; and you will 

probably 



YOUNG. 183 

probably find that lie has mingled too much 
fancy and playfulness with his grief, to 
Tender it highly affecting. 

The versification of Young is entirely 
modelled by his style of writing. That 
being pointed, sententious, and broken into 
short detached clauses, his lines almost 
constantly are terminated with a pause in 
the sense, so as to preclude all the varied 
and lengthened melody of which blank 
verse is capable. Taken singly, however, 
they are generally free from harshness, and 
sometimes are eminently musical. 

I now dismiss you frojra your long atten- 
dance on the poets of this class, and re- 
main 

Your truly affectionate, &c. 



LETTER 



[ 184 ] 



LETTER XIV. 



In restoring you, my dear Mary, to the 
company of those writers who have culti- 
vated English poetry in what is generally 
deemed its most pleasing and perfect form, 
it is my intention without delay to enlarge 
your acquaintance with different modes of 
versification, and to familiarize your ear 
with those specimens of it which have 
proved most agreeable to refined judges. 

We will begin with a poet who has em- 
ployed more ail and study in his composi- 
tions than almost any other; in conse- 
quence of which they are few, bat exqui- 
site in their kind. This is Gray, a man of 
extensive erudition and highly cultured 
taste, whose place is generally assigned 
among the lyrical writers, though his cast 
of genius would have enabled him to attain 

equal 



LYRIC POETRY : GRAY. 185 

equal excellence in any other form of ele- 
vated poetry. 

The " Odes" of Gray are pieces of great 
diversity both with respect to subject and 
manner. The "Ode on Spring," and that 
u On a distant Prospect of Eton College," 
unite description with moral reflection. In 
the first of these the imagery has little no- 
velty, but is dressed in all the splendour 
and elegance of poetical diction . You will 
remark the happy choice of picturesque 
epithets in such instances as u peopled air," 
" busy murmur," u honied spring," &c. in 
which a whole train of ideas is excited 
in the mind by a single word. The se- 
cond is new in its subject, and the pic- 
ture it draws of the amusements and cha- 
racter of the puerile age is very interesting. 
Yet the concluding imagery of the fiends 
of vice and misfortune, watching in am- 
bush to seize the thoughtless victims on 
their entrance into life, presents one of the 
gloomiest views of human kind that the 

imagination ever formed. 

The 



186 LETTER XIV. 

The author's melancholy cast of thought 
appears with more dignity and moral in- 
struction in his " Hymn to Adversity/' 
which, if not one of the most splendid, is 
perhaps the most finished of his composi- 
tions. The sombre colouring, relieved with 
the brighter touches of benevolence, ad- 
mirably harmonizes with the subject. 

I do not mean to make remarks on all 
Gray's smaller pieces ; but his " Fatal Sis- 
ters," from the Norse tongue, is worthy 
of observation, not only for the new 
vein of mythological imagery which it 
and the subsequent piece open, but on 
account of its measure. This consists of 
stanzas of four lilies, each composed of 
seven syllables, long and short alternately. 
If its effect upon your ear resembles that 
upon mine, you will feel it to possess 
extraordinary spirit and animation, and 
to be singularly fitted for subjects of warmth 
and action. 

The two Pindaric Odes of this writer 
are the productions which have principally 

, contributed 



GRAY. J87 

contributed, to his eminence among lyric 
poets. The term pindaric, originally de- 
rived from the name of the celebrated Greek 
poet, had been assumed by Cowley and 
others to denote compositions which were 
characterised by nothing but their irregu- 
larity. This character extended not only 
to their subjects, but to their versification, 
which consisted of verses of every length 
and modulation, forming unequal stanzas, 
without any return or repetition of the 
same measures. But this laxity was found 
not to be justified by classical example, 
which, in its correct models, provided re- 
gular returns of similarly constructed stan- 
zas. On this plan Gray has framed the 
versification of his two odes; and upon 
examination you will find in each the me- 
chanism of a ternary of stanzas trebly re- 
peated in corresponding order. Whether 
much is gained by this artifice in point of 
harmony, you will judge from your own 
perceptions : to me, I own, the return seems 
too distant to produce the intended eflect ; 

and 



188 LETTER XIV. 

and in reading, I am unable to take in 
more than the melody of the current stan- 
za. The measures, however, considered 
separately, are extremely melodious, and in 
general well adapted to the sense. Probably 
the English language does not afford exam- 
ples of sweeter and richer modulation. 

The Greek motto prefixed to the first of 
these odes, " The Progress of Poesy," im- 
plies that it was addressed to the intelligent 
alone ; and indeed a familiarity with antient 
learning greater than falls to the lot of most 
readers, even of the male sex, is requisite 
for entering into its beauties. If you should 
be able to discover little more in it than 
fine words and sonorous verses, you need 
not be greatly mortified : even critics have 
misunderstood it, and scholars have read it 
with indifference. The truth is, that no 
poem can be interesting without an express 
subject perspicuously treated ; and that 
obscure allusions and shadowy images can 
make no strong and durable impression on 
the mind. The proper theme of this piece 

is 



GRAY. 189 

is lost in glittering allegory, and the il- 
lustrations are too scanty and too slightly 
touched to answer their purpose. 

The " Bard" has gained more popula- 
rity, because it begins with presenting to 
the imagination a distinct historical picture 
of great force and sublimity, and such as 
might be transferred to canvas with striking 
effect. The figure of the prophetic poet on 
his rock, the " long array" of Edward 
winding down the side of Snowdon, the 
awe-struck and alarmed chieftains, are con- 
ceived in a truly grand style. The subse- 
quent sketches from English history, though 
touched with the obscurity of prediction, 
yet present images sufficiently distinct, 
when aided by the previous knowledge of 
the reader. There is, however, too much 
of enigma in the lines hinting at the future 
race of English poets, nor does their intro- 
duction seem well suited to the awful situ- 
ation of the speaker. A poet of more in- 
vention, too, would have avoided the same- 
ness of alluding to Shakes pear and Milton 
8 at 



190 LETTER XIV. 

at the close of both his odes. A greater 
fault appears to me the fiction of the ma- 
gical iveb, borrowed from the Scandinavian 
superstition. It has no proper place in 
the costume of a Welsh bard; and (what 
is a greater incongruity) the weaving is 
only imaginary, since the Bard's fellow- 
labourers are spirits of the dead : it could 
not, therefore, upon any supposition, ope- 
rate as a cause of the disastrous events 
which are depicted. Yet this notion is 
clearly implied by the lines 

Now, Brothers, bending o'er th' accursed loom 
Stamp we our vengeance deep, and ratify his doom. 

A poet has a right to assume any system 
of supernatural machinery he pleases, as if 
it were a real mode of operation, provided 
lie be consistent in the use of it. But it 
was Gray's talent to gather from all parts 
of his multifarious reading, images, and 
even expressions, that struck him as po- 
etical, which he inserted in his composi- 
tions, sometimes with happy effect., some- 
times 



GRAY. 191 

times with little attention to propriety, 
Thus, in this poem, borrowing Milton's 
noble comparison of Satan's great standard 
to a " meteor streaming to the wind/' lie 
applies it to the " beard and hoary hair" 
of the bard ; where it is altogether extra- 
vagant. 

The work of this poet which readers of 
all classes have most concurred in admiring 
is his " Elegy in a Country Church- Yard." 
No performance of the elegiac kind can 
compare with it either in splendour or in 
dignity. Not a line flows negligently; not 
an epithet is applied at random. Sensible 
objects are represented with every pictu- 
resque accompaniment, and sentiments are 
impressed with all the force of glowing 
and pointed diction. The general strain 
of thinking is such as meets the assent of 
every feeling and cultivated mind. It con- 
sists of those reflections upon human life 
which inspire a soothing melancholy, and 
peculiarly accord with that serious and ele- 
vated mood in which true poetry is most 

relished, 



192 LETTER XIV. 

relished. There are, however, some ob- 
scure passages ; and the connexion of the 
thoughts is not always manifest. It may 
also be questioned whether a good effect is 
produced by calling off the attention from 
the real fortunes and characters of the in- 
habitants of a village, to those of the ima- 
ginary poet with whose epitaph the piece 
concludes. There seems no reason why 
we should be introduced to him at all, un- 
less curiosity were to be better gratified 
concerning him ; and his address to him- 
self, ("For thee, who mindful of th' un- 
honour'd dead/') with the subsequent ac- 
count of his own death, strangely confuses 
the reader's imagination. Notwithstanding 
these defects, however, this poem has me- 
rited that extraordinary popularity which 
has been testified by innumerable imita- 
tions, parodies, and translations into an- 
tient and modern languages. Its success 
affords a remarkable proof of the power of 
poetry, which, by the charm of melodious 
verse and splendid diction, could raise so 

much 






MASON. 193 

much admiration and interest from so 
slendour a fund. 

The fragments of great undertakings to 
be met with in Gray's works show that na- 
ture had not been bountiful to him in the 
faculties requisite for a poet of the first 
class, and that his vein, when not sup- 
plied from the stores of memory, was soon 
exhausted : for it would be too indulgent 
to suppose that he could have finished these 
designs in the spirit with which he com- 
menced them. The finest of these, the 
" Essay on the Alliance of Education and 
Government, 7 r is a noble specimen of he- 
roic poetry ; but it is evident that he had 
lavished away the most picturesque ideas 
belonging to his subject, and had run his 
fancy out of breath. 

The name of Mason, the friend of Gray, 
has generally accompanied his as a modern 
competitor for the lyrical laurel ; and al- 
< hough the late period to which he sur- 
vived has prevented his works from being 
inserted in the collections of English pods, 
o yet 



194 LETTER XIT. 

yet I shall recommend to yojir perusal such 
of them as are found in a volume printed 
many years ago, and received with public 
approbation. These chiefly consist of Odes, 
Elegies, and Dramatic Poems. 

The Odes of this writer bear the same 
character of high polish and elaborate effort 
which distinguishes those of his friend. 
Every artiiice which has been practised for 
elevating language into poetry is sedulously 
employed, and ornaments are scattered 
throughout with a lavish hand. The effect 
produced is that the reader's attention is 
rather drawn to the detail, than to the plan 
and general scope of his pieces. They re- 
semble an apartment richly furnished, and 
adorned with a profusion of carving and 
gilding, over which the eye wanders from 
part to part, little regarding the symmetry 
of the whole, or the company which occu- 
pies it. After reading an ode of Mason's, 
no one distinct impression dwells on the 
mind, but a confused recollection of glit- 
tering imagery and melodious verse. The 

abstract 



MASON. ]D5 

abstract nature of their subjects generally 
precludes interest, and they neither warm 
to enthusiasm nor melt to sympathy. Yet 
their splendid descriptions and exalted sen* 
timents indicate no ordinary measure of 
poetical powers, though perhaps misled in 
their application by a false taste. Where 
the author's propensity to deviate into the 
flowery paths of digressive imagery was 
controlled by an animated subject, he has 
shown himself not deficient in spirit and 
energy. That ode in u Caractacus" be- 
ginning 

Hark ! beard ye not yon footstep dread, 

was admired by Gray as one of the sub- 
limest in the language. It is to be la- 
mented that an air of puerility is thrown 
over it by the petty artifice of alliteration, 
which is repeated so as to become almost hi 
dicrous : 

1 mark'd his mail, I mark'd his shield, 
I spy'd the sparkling of his spear. 

Denl the dole of destiny; See. 

The 



196 LETTER XIV. 

The reduplication of the same letters in these 
lines gives such an appearance of studied 
trifling, that good taste would have reject- 
ed it if offering itself unsought, instead of 
taking pains to search for it. A chastised 
judgment will, I believe, seldom approve 
a more liberal use of this device, than oc- 
casionally to produce a consonance of ad- 
jective and substantive, or verb and noun. 

Several of Mason's most laboured odes 
are introduced in his "Elfrida" and " Ca- 
ractacus," which are altogether poetical 
dramas, and may therefore make a part 
of your present course of reading. The 
poetry in them, especially in the latter, is 
often worthy of admiration. As tragedies 
they have not been successful ; and I ima- 
gine the attempted revival of the Greek 
chorus will never be adopted by a real ge- 
nius for the stage. 

Probably you will be better pleased with 
the elegies of Mason than with his lyric 
productions. Referring to real life and man- 
ners, their sentiments are more natural ; and 

their 



MASON'. J97 

their descriptions have less of the glare of 
gaudy ornament. In the second elegy there 
is a very elegant sketch of a pleasure-ground 
in the modern improved taste, which may 
he regarded as a prelude to his later didac- 
tic poem " The English Garden." His 
u Elegy on the Death of a Lady" (the ad- 
mired countess of Coventry) will doubtless 
particularly interest you. The description 
of female beauty with which it commences, 
is wrought to a polished brilliancy that Pope 
himself could not have surpassed : 

Whene'er with soft serenity she smil'd, 

Or caught the orient blush of quick surprise, 

How sweetly mutable, how brightly wild, 
The liquid lustre darted from her eyes ! 

Each look, each motion wak'd a new-born grace, 
That o'er her form its transient glory cast : 

Some lovelier wonder soon usurp'd the place, 
Chas'd by a charm still lovlier than the last. 

The lesson drawn from her untimely 
fate, though awful, is not repulsively 
gloomy ; and although there is some in- 
correctness in the reasoning concerning a 

future 



198 LETTER XIT. 

future state, it is upon the whole impres* 
sive and well pointed. 

I shall here close my remarks on a writer, 
the propriety of whose introduction in this 
place may be questioned; though I can 
feel no hesitation in recommending to your 
notice, wherever you may meet with them, 
any of the productions of one whose mo- 
ral merits render him always an instructive 
companion, while his poetical excellencies 
can scarcely fail of making him an agree- 
able one. 

I remain very affectionately, 

Yours, &c. 



LETTER 



COLLINS. 199 



LETTER XV. 



I shall now request my amiable pupil to 
open the volume containing the works of 
Collins, a poet whom I consider as hav- 
ing possessed more original genius than 
either of the two last mentioned, though 
a short and unhappy life did not allow him 
to elaborate his strains to equal perfection. 
Like Pope, he first tried his powers in the 
humble walk of pastoral, and produced his 
" Oriental Eclogues;" which, notwith- 
standing the little esteem which the author 
himself afterwards expressed for them, may 
claim the merit of quitting the ordinary 
ground of rural poetry, and enriching it 
with new imagery. The eclogues are all 
characterized by purity and tenderness of 
sentiment, by elegant and melodious verse. 
Two of them, " The Camel Driver," and 

II The Fugitives," likewise contain much 

appro- 



200 LETTER XV. 

appropriate description, and present some 
striking pictures. That the writer had a 
strong conception of scenes fitted for the 
pencil, further appears from his " Epistle 
to Sir Thomas Hanmer;" in which, after 
a lively sketch of the progress of dramatic 
poetry in modern times, he suggests that 
mode of illustrating the beauties of our 
great dramatist by the kindred art of paint- 
ing, which has since taken place, so much 
to the honour of the liberal undertaker; and 
he gives spirited draughts of two designs 
for this purpose. 

The fame of Collins is however princi- 
pally founded upon his "Odes Descriptive 
and Allegorical," pieces which stand in the 
first rank of lyrical poetry. Of these, some 
are exquisitely tender and pathetic, others 
are animated and sublime, and all exhibit 
that predominance of feeling and fancy 
which forms the genuine poetic character. 
Some are shrowded in a kind of mystic ob- 
scurity that veils their meaning from the 
common reader ; but no one who is quali- 
fied 



COLLINS. 201 

fied to taste the higher beauties of poetry 
can fail to receive delight from the spirit of 
his allegorical figures, and the vividness of 
his descriptive imagery. His versification 
is extremely varied, and several of its forms 
are peculiar to himself. The free irregular 
flow of some of his strains gives them the 
air of being the spontaneous product of 
present emotion, like the voluntaries of a 
master musician ; and no English poet 
seems to have possessed a more musical 
ear. One of the most successful experi- 
ments of the employment of blank verse 
in lyric measure is presented in his " Ode 
to Evening;" but I am not sure whether 
we are not rather cheated into forgetful- 
ness of the verse by the force of the de- 
scription, than brought deliberately to ac- 
quiesce in the want of its accustomed de- 
coration. 

The most striking of his Odes is that 
entitled " The Passions." It is said to be 
composed for music ; but I doubt whether 

its 



202 LETTER. XV. 

its fitness for that purpose be not rather 
according to the poet's conception than the 
musician's, which are often found to be 
widely different. The concluding stanza, 
indeed, seems to confess that the author 
expected little from the alliance of modern 
music with Poetry. The idea of represent- 
ing the passions as performers upon differ- 
ent instruments is a happy one, and their 
manners and attitudes are in general highly 
characteristic. The figure of Hope is en- 
chanting, and her strains are some of the 
sweetest the English language affords. I 
am not judge enough of music to decide 
on the propriety of making both Melan- 
choly and Cheerfulness select the horn as 
their instrument ; but the contrasted effect 
of their different tones is finely painted. I 
know not a more animated group of figures 
than those which the " hunter's call" sets 
in motion : 

The oak crown'd Sisters, and their chaste -eyed Queen, 

Satyrs and sylvan boys were seen, 

Peeping from forth their alleys green ; 

Brow* 



COLLINS. 2Q3 

Brown Exercise rejoiced to hear, 
And Sport leapt up and seiz'd his beechen spear. 

Some readers have been disappointed at 
missing Love among the impassioned fra- 
ternity. Possibly the author thought that 
it was no single passion, and that it was 
nothing more than hope, despair, jealousy, 
&c. pointed to a particular object. But in 
truth, perhaps from being ill used by the 
capricious deity, he seems to have regarded 
him with ill will, and to have been ambi- 
tious of emancipating poetry from its sub- 
serviency to his designs. Thus where, in 
his " Ode to Simplicity," he laments the 
degradation sustained by the Roman muse 
from the loss of that quality, his proof of 
this declension is taken from the exclusive 
prevalence of the amatory strain : 

No more, in hall or bower, 
The Passions own thy power, 
Love, only love, her forceless numbers mean. 

If, however, the Ode on the Passions is 

defective 



§04 LETTER XV. 

defective in this particular, and inaccurate 
and unequal in some other respects, yet it 
bears that precious stamp of genius which 
cannot fail to secure its place among the 
noblest compositions of the class. 

The " Ode to Fear" abounds in strong 
and appropriate imagery. The affection of 
terror is justly accounted a source of the 
sublime ; and there is none which the ima- 
gination of poets has been more occupied 
in exciting. That Collins was keenly sen- 
sible of its influence appears from his un- 
finished " Ode on the Superstitions in the 
Scotch Highlands," where those of the 
gloomy and terrific kind are described with 
great force of painting. But he also par- 
took largely in the tender affections, to 
which several of his finest productions are 
devoted. The "'Odes to Pity and to Mer- 
cy " are of this class. The picture in the 
latter, of Mercy personified as a female, 
with her bosom bare, pleading for the life 
of a youth fallen under the arm of a strong- 
er warrior, is exquisitely touching. The 

" Dirge 



akenside's odes. 205 

" Dirge in Cymbeline," the " Ode on the 
Death of Colonel Ross," and the " Ode on 
the Brave fallen in Battle," are admirable 
pieces of this class, in which feeling and 
fancy are associated as they exist in the 
mind of a genuine poet — and such Collins 
undoubtedly was, though his faculties were 
blasted by misfortune before they arrived 
at their full expansion. 

I shall employ the remainder of this let- 
ter in some remarks upon one or two other 
lyric poets whose works may claim your 
attention. 

It is to be regretted Avhen a man of real 
talents mistakes his powers, and hazards 
by unsuccessful attempts the loss of part of 
the reputation he had acquired by former 
exertions. This is generally admitted to be 
the case with respect to Akenside as a 
writer of odes. His compositions under 
this title are so numerous, that we must 
suppose he felt pleasure and expected fame 
from the employment ; yet there is scarcely 
one which excites any thing like rapture in 

the 



806 LETTER XY. 

the reader. They are not devoid of poetry, 
either in the sentiments or the diction ; but 
they are stiff and inanimate, without the 
enthusiasm of the loftier ode, or the ame- 
nity of the lighter. He has tried a great 
variety of measures; but some displease 
by their monotony, while others present 
changes of length and modulation which 
have no apparent correspondence with the 
sense, and add nothing to the melody. Se- 
veral of them are upon amatory topics, but 
never was a colder worshipper at the shrine 
of Venus than Dr. Akenside. He is much 
more at home in his patriotic strains ; and 
if any thing strikes fire from his bosom, it 
is the idea of liberty. His Odes to the earl 
of Huntingdon, and the bishop of Win- 
chester, possess much dignity of sentiment 
with considerable vigour of expression. 

Much happier, in my opinion, in his lyri- 
cal performances, is a writer greatly inferior 
to Akenside in poetical renown, and chiefly 
known in other walks of literature. This 
is Smollett, the novelist, historian, and 

political 



SMOLLETT. 207 

political writer, who has left a few speci- 
mens of his powers as a poet, sufficient to 
inspire regret that he did not cultivate them 
to a greater extent. His " Tears of Scot- 
land," and " Ode to Leven Water," are 
pieces of great sentimental and descriptive 
beauty ; but his " Ode to Independence" 
rises to the first rank of compositions of that 
class. It opens with great spirit, and much 
fancy is displayed in the parentage and edu- 
cation of the personified subject of the 
piece. The travels of Independence form 
a series of animated historical sketches ; 
but it would have been more correct to 
have included Albion in the track of his 
peregrinations, than to have made it his 
birth-place. The concluding stanza, in 
which the poet lays aside fiction, and draws 
a sober picture of life and character, gives a 
fine moral termination to the whole. If ex- 
cellence is to be judged of by effect, I know 
few pieces that can be compared to this 
Ode for the force with which it arrests the 
reader's attention, and the glow of sentiment 

which 



208 LETTER XV, 

which it inspires. Mason's ode on the same 
subject appears tame and insipid in the pa- 
rallel. 

I could readily direct you to more com- 
positions of the lyric class, which are by 
no means rare in English poetry ; but those 
already pointed out will suffice for examples 
of the various styles and manners adopted 
by the writers who have most excelled. 

Jf you should have become enamoured 
with what an humorous writer has called 
" cloud-capt ode/' you may indulge your 
taste at small expense by turning over a 
set of old Magazines or Annual Registers, 
in which you will not fail to find two ela- 
borate compositions of the kind every year, 
by a person dignified Avith the poetic laurel. 
The small advantage this official bard has 
often derived from his prescribed subject, 
lias put him upon exerting all the powers 
of his invention to bring in collaterally 
something worthy of the expectations of 
his illustrious auditors. And as the office, 
during the present reign, has been in the 

possession 



BIRTII-DAY ODES. 209 

possession of men of respectable talents, 
some very extraordinary efforts have been 
made to elevate these periodical strains 
above the mediocrity of former times. I 
do not, however, seriously recommend to 
you a course of defunct birth-day odes; it 
would be too severe a trial of your perseve- 
rance. Sufficient for the year are the odes 
of the year. 

Adieu ! 



LETTER 



[ 210 j 



LETTER XVI. 

I he writers to whom you have been 
lately directed must have made you fami- 
liar with that figure to which poetry is so 
much indebted — personification. It is this 
which by embodying abstract ideas, and 
giving them suitable attributes and action, 
has peopled the regions of fancy with a 
swarm of new beings, ready to be em- 
ployed in any mode that the invention may 
suggest. The lyric poets have been satis- 
lied with a slight and transient view of 
these personages. They usually begin with 
an invocation, follow it with a genealogy 
and portrait, and having paraded their 
nymph or goddess through a few scenes of 
business, in which she is in continual dan- 
ger of reverting to a mere quality, finally 
dismiss her. 

Others, however, have not chosen so* 

readily 



ALLEGORICAL POETXIY. 211 

readily to part with the creation of their 
fancy. They have framed a fable, in 
which the imaginary being may have full 
scope for its agency, and have bestowed 
upon it auxiliaries and adversaries, a local 
residence, and all other circumstances 
serving to realise their fiction. This fable is 
an allegory. You have probably met with 
some of these in your prose readings, and 
have been entertained and instructed by 
them in the pages of Addison and Johnson. 
As they are, however, essentially poetical 
in their nature, they seem peculiarly suited 
to verse. There was a period in which the 
English poets, deriving their taste from 
the Italian school, were extremely addicted 
to* this species of invention, and indeed 
carried it to a wearisoms excess. Although 
the taste has in a great measure passed 
over, it is worth while to become ac- 
quainted with some of the best productions 
of the class, since they hold no mean place 
among the offspring of the human intellect. 
I shall therefore now introduce you to an 

author 



212 LETTER XVI. 

author who, if antiquity had been the 
ground of precedence in our plan, ought 
to have received your earliest homage : but 
it was necessary to have acquired a strong 
relish for poetry before he could safely be 
put into your hands ; for I w ill not con- 
ceal from you, that it requires no small 
share of perseverance to become possessed 
of the beauties of the divine Spenser. 

His "Faery Queen" is by much the 
most considerable allegorical poem in our 
language ; and in manj^ respects it deserves 
the reputation which through two centuries 
it has enjoyed. Its plan, indeed, is most 
singularly perplexed and incoherent ; and 
as the work is unfinished, it would be en- 
tirely unintelligible had not the author him- 
self given a prefatory explanation of it. The 
term faery is used by him to denote some- 
thing existing only in the regions of fancy, 
and tlie Faery Queen is the abstract idea of 
Glory personified. The knights of faery- 
lmd are the twelve virtues, who are the 
champions or servants of the queen. The 

British 



SPENSER. 



213 



British prince Arthur, who is the subject 
of so many fabulous legends, becomes 
enamoured of the Faery Queen in a vision, 
and comes to seek her in faery-land. He 
is the image of perfect excellence, and is 
regarded as the general hero qf the piece. 
Each book, however, lias its particular 
hero, who. is one of the virtues above 
mentioned, and who goes through a course 
of adventures modelled upon the talcs of 
chivalry, and having for their object the 
relief of some distressed damsel, or other 
sufferer under wrong ajid oppression. He 
encounters giants, monsters, enchanters, 
and the like, who are the allegorised foes 
of the particular virtue of which he is the 
representative ; and prince Arthur, the ge- 
neral hero, occasionally appears as his 
auxiliary when he is hard pressed. 

Thus far there is .some consistency in 
the plan; but the poet had the further view 
of paying his court to queen Elizabeth, the 
great topic of all the learned adulation of 
the age. She is therefore typified by the 

person 



214 LETTER XVI. 

person of the Faery Queen, and several 
incidents of her history are related under 
the veil of allegory : the principal perso- 
nages of her court are likewise occasion- 
ally alluded to in the characters of the faery 
knights. Moreover, the supposed real 
history of Arthur and other British princes 
is interwoven with the tissue of fictitious 
adventure. It is impossible to conceive a 
more tangled skein of narrative, and the au- 
thor could scarcely expect that any reader 
would take the pains to unravel it. In 
fact, no one at present regards this poem 
in any other light than as a gallery of alle- 
gorical pictures, no otherwise connected 
than by the relation several of them bear 
to one common hero. It would be no easy 
matter to form one consistent allegory of 
any single book, and to explain the emble- 
matical meaning of every adventure ascri- 
bed to its particular knight. Yet in many 
instances the allegory is sufficiently plain 
and well-supported ; and to run through 
the work as some readers do. merely amus- 



SPENSER* t2I5 

ing themselves with a tissue of marvellous 
incidents, like those of the Seven Cham- 
pions of Christendom, without any search 
after the " truth severe in fairy fiction 
drest," is a degradation of the author, 
and an injustice to themselves. 

A hint which I have given you concern- 
ing perseverance will perhaps make you 
cast an eye on the length of this work, 
and inquire whether you are expected to 
go through the whole, xUthough we pos- 
sess but one half of the author's design, 
six of his books being said to have perished 
at sea, I am not so unreasonable as to en- 
join an uninterrupted perusal of the long, 
and, it must be confessed, rather tedious 
succession of combats, enchantments, and 
romantic adventures which fills the six re- 
maining ones. All I wish is to give you 
a full taste of his peculiar excellencies, 
which you will find to consist in wonder- 
ful strength of painting, and an inexhaus- 
tible invention in the creations of fancy. 
AVhen you have got through the two le- 
gends 



216 LETTER XVI, 

gends of Holiness and Temperance, you 
will perhaps find your curiosity so much 
awakened as to induce you to proceed* 
In the first of these you cannot fail to be 
struck with the allegory of Despair, which 
in force of painting and correctness of ap- 
plication yields to no fiction of the kind, 
antient or modern. Indeed,, its effect is 
very much owing to the near approach the 
fiction makes to reality. Substitute to the 
Genius of Despair a gloomy fanatic em- 
ployed in preaching the terrific doctrines 
of reprobation and eternal misery, and you 
convert the phantom into a human being- 
There will then remain nothing more of 
the supernatural than some of the accom- 
paniments. He accomplishes his purpose 
entirely in the natural way of persuasion, 
and his subtle arguments are admirably 
adapted to plunge the soul into that state 
of desperation which is preparatory to 
self-destruction. Their gradual operation 
upon the mind of the Red-cross Knight is 
managed with great skill ; and words never 

drew 



SPENSER. 217 

drew a picture of more vivid expression 
than that of the final paroxysm of his 
passion : 

He to him raught a dagger sharpe and keen, 
And gave it him in hand : his hand did quake, 
And tremble like a leafe of aspin greene, 
And troubled blood through his pale face was seen 
To come and goe with tidings from the heart, 
As it a running messenger had been. 
At last resolv'd to work his final smart, 
He lifted up his hand, that backe ajaine did start. 

The cave of Mammon in the second 
book is extremely rich in scenery and fi- 
gures, and impresses the imagination with 
the wonders of an Arabian tale. The dan- 
ger impending over the Knight of Tempe- 
rance were he to touch the least part of the 
riches displayed before his eyes, is a fine 
stroke of moral allegory, well exemplify- 
ing the nature of avarice. The whole fable 
of the Bower of Bliss is highly poetical, 
but its beauties are chiefly copied from 
Tasso and Ariosto. 

It could not be expected that so copious 

an 



218 LETTElt XVI. 

an invention as that of Spenser, at so early 
a period of English literature, should be 
uniformly regulated by propriety and good 
taste. We must not be surprised, therefore, 
to find many of his images disgusting and 
extravagant; and his allegories frequently 
rendered incongruous by the mixture of 
objects of reality with objects of similitude. 
Thus Error is made to disgorge both looks 
and reptiles : the former belong to the in- 
tellectual notion of error as an abstract 
quality ; the latter, to its type or represen- 
tative, imaged under the form of a serpent- 
like monster. It will be an useful exer- 
cise to examine his fictions in this respect, 
and to detect their inconsistencies. In 
truth, the allegorist, who undertakes to 
create, as it were, a nature of things of 
his own, peopled with ideas instead of sub- 
stances, engages in a task more arduous 
than he is probably aware of, and is fortu- 
nate if he avoids absurdities. 

The language of Spenser will appear to 
you uncouth, and at first scarcely intel- 
ligible. 



SPENSER. 219 

liable. In reality, it was that of no one 
period, but was framed by the author with 
a large admixture of obsolete words and 
phrases, in order to give it the venerable 
air of antiquity. Other poets of different 
countries have practised the same artifice, 
which, I confess, appears to me unworthy 
of true genius. There are, indeed, in 
most languages, expressions of peculiar 
energy and significance, which have been 
preserved for poetic use after they have 
ceased to make a part of common speech. 
But this privilege is only due to their in- 
trinsic value; and when it is extended to 
such terms as have been replaced by more 
apt ones, the only effect is rudeness and 
incongruity. Spenser, however, had ano- 
ther reason for the latitude he has assumed 
in his vocabulary. The measure he has 
employed nearly resembles the ottava lima 
or eight-lined stanza of the Italians, with 
a terminating alexandrine. This obliged 
him to provide four, and three, similar 
rhymes for each; which, in the English 

language. 



220 LETTER XVI. 

language, is a burtliensome task, and it is 
extraordinary that any one should find pa- 
tience enough to accomplish it in a per- 
formance of the length of the Faery Queen. 
fie could surmount the difficulty only by 
taking every advantage that poetical license 
would allow; and he lias therefore made 
no scruple of forcing into the service of 
rhyme every word of any age or parentage 
which, however imperfectly, would accom- 
modate itself to the sense. If an enemy 
to rhyme wished to argue against it from 
the improprieties of diction to which it 
gives rise, he might find proofs of the fact 
in every page of this poem ; and certainly 
there can be no gratification derived from 
such a complicated system of rhyme which 
it is worth while to purchase at such a 
price. The stanza of Spenser, however, 
possesses a fullness of melody which is ex- 
tremely pleasing to the ear. On this ac- 
count, notwithstanding the difficulty of 
execution, it has been copied by several 
poets, who have managed it with extraor- 
dinary 



THOMSON. 221 

dinary address. Tboy have generally;, at 
the same time, adopted many of the obso- 
lete words of the author; a practice which 
succeeds well in paiqdy or burlesque, but 
appears to me ill-suited to grave and digni- 
fied topics. Some of these imitations, 
however, are poems of considerable merit. 
I shall point out one or two to your notice. 
Perhaps the most pleasing of all alle- 
gorical poems in Spenser's manner is 
Thomson's " Castle of Indolence." It 
is, indeed, one of the capital performances 
of this writer, and would alone have en- 
titled him to poetical eminence. The de- 
scription with which it opens presents a 
most delightful rural scene, and prepares 
the mind for a favourable hearing of the 
subsequent address of the wizard or en- 
chanter Indolence. This potent being is 
represented as acting, like Spenser's De- 
spair, by the force of persuasion ; and a 
more eloquent harangue is nowhere to be 
met with than that which the port puts 
into his mouth. I know not, indeed; whe- 
ther 



22% LETTER XVI. 

tiler it is not almost too persuasive for the 
moral effect of the piece, especially when 
enforced by the delicious picture of the 
life led in this mansion of pleasure. No 
wonder that the poet himself was too well 
disposed to become a subject of the Power 
whose allurements he so feelingly describes ; 
and we may believe that he spoke from his. 
heart when he exclaimed 

Escap'd the castle of the Sire of sin, 

Ah ! \thcre shall I so sweet a dwelling find ? 

Yet the bard of Industry is a truly ani- 
mated orator ; and the reader is judiciously 
left under the impression of his strains, 
which may finally incline the balance to 
the right side. 

The birth and education of the Knight 
of Arts and Industry, with his progress 
through different countries in the glorious 
labour of civilizing mankind, is a fine 
piece of allegorical personification. His 
final settlement in Britain is a patriotic 
idea, which has foundation enough in truth 

to 



THOMSON. 223 

to obtain ready admission with an English 
reader, whose bosom cannot fail to glow 
with the noble eulogy pronounced on his 
country ; 

He lik'd the soil, he Hk'd the clement skies, 
He lik'd the verdant hills and flowery plains. 
Be this my great, my chosen isle, he cries; 
This, while my labours Liberty sustains, 
This queen of ocean all assault disdains, ike. 

Some of the subordinate personifications 
are touched with great spirit ; such as those 
ox the diseases to which the votaries of 
indolence become a prey. It is to be ob- 
served, however, that they are made pas- 
sive rather than active beings, distinguished 
merely by the symptoms of those maladies 
they are supposed to inflict. This is a 
kind of incongruity from which allegory is 
rarely free. It is so obvious a mode of 
characterising one of these fancy-formed 
persons, to imbue him strongly with the 
quality meant to be represented, that poets 
have seldom adopted any other. Thus, 

An ire r 



224 LETTER XTI. 

Anger is painted as a man in a fit of rage : 
Fear, as one flying from a terrific object ; 
and the like. This method succeeds very 
well when they are only figures repre- 
sented in a show or pageant ; but when 
they are made actors in a fable, a difficulty 
often arises as to the manner of their 
agency. For if the quality be of a passive 
or quiescent nature, its employment in 
any violent action, such as that of encoun- 
tering a foe, or destroying a victim, ap- 
pears an incongruity. Diseases figured as 
patients are very uhfit for agents ; for what 
is the action of Lethargy u with deadly 
sleep opprest," or " swoln and unwieldy " 
Hydropsy? Thomson has strangely con- 
founded the two conditions of acting and 
suffering. In the compass of four lines he 
has the Tertian " shaking his chilling 
wings;" the " sleepless" Gout " count- 
ing the morning clocks;" and Apoplexy 
46 knocking down Intemperance." I shall 
not pursue this vein of criticism any further, 

but 



ALLEGORICAL POETRY. 22.J 

but leave you to examine particular in- 
stances according to the rules resulting 
from the preceding observations. 

We have several other allegorical pieces 
written in Spenser's style and manner, and 
deserving the praise of ingeriuity; but I do 
not wish to detain you longer with a spe- 
cies of fiction which, when managed with 
the greatest skill, is apt to prove tiresome. 
In fact, however we may admire the dex- 
terity with which abstract qualities are 
con verted into persons, and engaged in 
adventures suitable to their nature, the 
want of reality must ever render such a 
fable little interesting, and the reader's 
mind will be perpetually distracted between 
attention to the obvious story and to the 
concealed meaning. A well-contrived al- 
legory is a continued riddle or enigma; and 
there are few who are not soon fatigued 
with the exertion necessary for a full com- 
prehension of such a piece of artifice. I 
shall therefore dismiss the imitators of 
Q Spenser 



226 LETTER XVI. 

Spenser with the notice of one who has 
employed his manner for a different pur- 
pose, that of giving a sort of burlesque 
dignity to a subject drawn from humble 
life. 

The " School-mistress" of Shenstone 
is accounted the happiest effort of that wri- 
ter, who is distinguished rather for ele- 
gance of sentiment than for high poetic 
powers. He has here, however, presented 
us with a work of great excellence ; for a 
performance which was never read without 
pleasure and interest, and was never forgot- 
ten by any reader, well deserves that title. 
It somewhat resembles Gay's pastorals in 
exactness of delineation, and the mixture 
of the comic with the tender ; but Shen- 
stone is more seriously pathetic than that 
writer. Nothing can be more natural than 
the portrait of the good dame with all the 
little accompaniments of her dwelling and 
garden. The incident of the poor little 
boy under correction is at the same time 

humorous 



SCHOOL-MISTRESS. 227 

humordus and touching ; and hard must 
be the heart which is not moved to sympa- 
thy when 

His little sister doth his peril see. 

The children sporting on the green, and 
the tempting dainties " galling full sore 
th' unmoney'd wight/' are circumstances 
of much simple beauty. Trivial as is the 
topic of the piece, I know few poems which 
display more good sense or a more benevo- 
lent heart. It is one of those which leave 
impressions not only pleasing but melio- 
rating. From the time I first read it, the 
view of children at play has excited in me 
sensations of tender pleasure that I can 
scarcely describe ; and I seldom fail men- 
tally to repeat 

Heav'n shield their short-lived pastimes ! I implore. 

Farewell ! 



LETTER 



[ 228 ] 



LETTER XVIL 



We have lately 5 my dear Mary, wandered 
so far into the regions of fancy, that there is 
nothing of the artificial and recondite cha- 
racter in poetry which may not now take its 
turn. I shall therefore make yon acquainted 
with a writer once not surpassed in fame 
by any English poet, though now r almost 
consigned to neglect, — the witty and inge- 
nious Cowley. He has undergone this fate 
not through want of genius, for he was at 
the head of his class, but through the radi- 
cal defects of that kind of writing which he 
adopted in compliance with the bad taste 
of the age. Almost every writer, both in 
prose and verse, who then aimed at repu- 
tation, sought to distinguish himself by 
the novelty and remoteness of his concep- 
tions, by the faculty of combining the most 
dissimilar ideas, and finding out hidden re- 
semblances 






COWLEY. ~ §29 

semblances in things the most unlike. 
Their object was to dazzle and surprise ; 
and, in attaining this, they necessarily miss- 
ed the much superior ends of affecting and 
persuading. They struck out latent sparks 
of meaning from the collision of words, 
but such as just flashed and disappeared. 
This class of poets has been termed the 
metaphysical ; and Dr. Johnson has sub- 
joined to his life of Cowley a character of 
them, illustrated by examples from their 
works, which is a most entertaining and 
instructive piece of criticism, and well 
merits a perusal. You will think it suffi- 
ciently excuses you from reading any other 
of these authors ; and I by no means wish 
you to take more of Cowley himself than, 
so much as may agreeably acquaint you 
with his style and manner. Such are the 
number and variety of his pieces, that I 
believe I must take upon myself the office 
of pointing out to you individually those 
which in my opinion are best worth your 
notice. 

Of 



230 LETTER XVII. 

Of his " Miscellanies," the ode entitled 
u Of Wit" is remarkable as an exercise 
of the quality it describes. You will pro- 
bably derive no accurate idea of it from 
his description ; but it is singular that he 
should enumerate among the defects of 
those who aim at wit, some of the charac- 
teristics of his own school. Thus, cen- 
suring the profusion with which glittering 
thoughts are sometimes heaped together, 
he says, 

Yet 'tis not to adorn and gild each part j 

That shows more cost than art. 
Jewels at nose and lips but ill appear : 
Bather than all things v> it, let none be there. 

He further observes, that it is not wit 

upon all things to obtrude 

And force some odd similitude. 

The poem " On the Death of Mr. Wil- 
liam Hervey" has more of the heart in it 
than is usual with Cowley. Jn that respect 
it may be advantageously compared with 

Milton's 



cowlev. 231 

Milton's Lycidas, which, like this, is the 
lamentation of one academic youth for an- 
other. The following stanza is particularly 
natural and touching : 

He was my friend, the truest friend on earth; 
A strong and mighty influence join'ei our birth; 
Nor did we envy the most sounding name 

By friendship giv-n of old to fame. 
None but his brethren he and sisters knew 

Whom the kind youth preferr'd to me ; 

And ev'n in that we did agree, 
For much above myself I lov'd them too. 

The ballad called " A Chronicle" is cer- 
tainly the sprightliest pleasantest thing of 
the class in our language. The idea of 
comparing a succession of mistresses to a 
line of sovereigns is supported with won- 
derful fancy and vivacity ; and the conclud- 
ing enumeration of the arts and instruments 
of female sway is very elegantly sportive. 
The talent of trifling with grace is com- 
monly thought no part of English genius ; 
but our liveliest aeighbours may be chal- 
lenged to produce a happier trifle than this 

chronicle 



<zm 



LETTER XYII. 



chronicle. Cowley lias displayed similar 
ease and vivacity of style in his " Anacre- 
ontiques," which are free translations or 
paraphrases of the Greek bard ; and in his 
" Acme and Septimius" from the Latin 
poet Catullus. In all these pieces the verse 
is generally smooth and the expression na- 
tural. 

The " Complaint," besides its poetical 
merit, is interesting from its reference to 
the writer's own life and character. He 
gives himself the title of " the melancholy 
Cowley," and, like many others of the fra- 
ternity, attributes all his ill success in the 
world to his devotion to the Muse. lie re- 
counts his disappointments not without a 
degree of dignity; but it is unpleasant to 
find a man of genius and learning partici- 
pating so much with the vulgar in his feel- 
ings respecting fortune. Dyer has shown 
a more elevated spirit where, having just 
touched upon the theme of neglected merit, 
he checks himself with " Enough! the 
plaint disdain." 

The 



COWLEY. 233 

The " Hymn to Light" is a piece in his 
best peculiar manner. It abounds with 
imagery as splendid and changeable as the 
matter which is its subject, and resembles 
that galaxy to which he has dispraisingly 
compared superabundant wit. The verse 
is extremely melodious, and the diction 
often exquisitely poetical. The thoughts 
are sometimes fine, sometimes fanciful ; but 
upon the whole it is a work of which Cow- 
ley alone was capable. 

The set of poems connected by the title 
of " The Mistress," though termed "love 
verses," have as little real love in them as 
if they were written on a system of logic. 
They are, in fact, exercises of wit upon 
certain given topics, which might have 
been composed by an academic or monk in 
a cloyster, who had never know.i the fair 
sex but from books. They are not proper 
to be presented to a young lady in the 
mass, yet one who could pick skilfully 
might find some harmless amusement. I 
shall, however, only desire you to read the 

two 



234 LETTER XTI1. 

two pieces " For Hope," and " Against 
Hope/ 5 as being extraordinary specimens 
of that inventive ingenuity which can turn 
a thought every possible way, and illus- 
trate it by every imaginable comparison. 
There is a pretty epigrammatic stanza in 
the piece entitled " The Waiting Maid," 
which you may perhaps recollect as quoted 
in the Spectator : 

Th' adorning thee with so much art 

Is but a barbarous skill ; 
} lis like the poisoning of a dart 

Too apt before to kill. 

Probably the greatest effort of Cowley in 
his own estimation was his " Pindaric 
Odes," a species of composition for which, 
according to his idea of it, he might seem 
well fitted, from the unrestrained variety 
of his conceptions. He made his first es- 
says in a free version of some of Pindar's 
odes, which I will not desire you to peruse; 
for what amusement are you likely to find 
in the obscure tales of antient mythology, 
and the adulation of forgotten horse-racers? 

His 



COWLEY. £95 

His own Pindarics arc more worthy objects 
of curiosity, though it is allowed that he 
mistook his genius in aiming at the sub- 
lime, which in him soon loses itself in ex- 
travagance, or sinks into familiar trifling. 
His thoughts and measures are equally un- 
bridled, and run wildly without purpose 
or object. There are, however, some fine 
strains of both which will repay the search ; 
and one advantage to be derived from all 
Cowley's productions is, that they cannot 
be hurried over in a negligent perusal, but 
require attention to discover and taste their 
beauties. But that you may not waste this 
attention unprofitably, I will mention as 
the odes most likely to entertain you, " The 
Resurrection," " The Muse," and " Life 
and Fame." 

Cowley's genius was still less fitted for 
epic poetry than pindaric. His unfinished 
attempt in this way entitled " Davideis" 
may therefore be safely neglected, for its 
few splendid passages do not compensate 
the tediousness and bad taste of the whole. 

I would 



236 LETTER XTI1. 

1 would wish you, however, to turn to the 
third book, 1. 785, where you wil! find a 
very poetical and melodious lyric ode, sup- 
posed to be addressed by David to Michal. 
It is extraordinary that this poet, who, from 
this and others of his productions, appears 
to have had a very nice perception of me- 
trical melody, should have been habitually 
so negligent in his versification, which in 
general is full of false prosody, and is bound 
by no rules. The poets of the metaphysi- 
cal school were particularly subject to this 
fault, which was probably owing to their 
fullness of thought, that was continually 
struggling for utterance, and allowed no 
time or place for correct modulation. 
Donne, the father of this school, was so 
careless in this respect, that his pieces can 
scarcely be termed verse ; and his example 
seems to have perverted the rest. 

Some of Cowley's most pleasing poeti- 
cal effusions are inserted in his prose essays, 
which are very agreeably written, and may 
be recommended to your perusal. They 

are 



BUTLER. 237 

are printed along with his poems. Many 
of them (both the prose and the verse 
intermixed) turn upon that taste for rural 
retirement which was a ruling passion in 
hitn, or, at least, appeared so to himself. 
The images of such a life are so generally 
delightful, that nature seems to have pro- 
nounced it the condition best suited to hu- 
man beings ; yet there are too many exam- 
ples of disappointment in the happiness 
it was expected to afford; and Cowley 
himself, when he was enabled to put his 
wishes into execution, found the most es- 
sential part wanting, a temper for enjoy- 
ment. A truly amiable character, however, 
shines through his writings, and their se- 
rious strains are all calculated to promote 
sentiments of piety and philanthropy. 

From the grave and the sportive em- 
ployment pf wit, we may naturally proceed 
to the use of it in satire and burlesque: and 
in Butler's "Hudibras" we shall find 
an example of this kind which stands un- 
rivalled in the poetic art. The purpose of 

this 



S38 LETTER XVII. 

this work was to throw ridicule upon that 
party which subverted the monarchy and 
church of England in the time of Charles I. 
Their reign, indeed, was over before the 
appearance of this poem, and it might seem 
unnecessary to attack a humiliated faction ; 
yet their principles were far from being ex- 
tinct, and to expose them to contempt was 
no mean service to the opposite cause. 
Accordingly, Hudibras became a great fa- 
vourite with the court and royalists : it was 
relished by a king who was himself a man 
of wit, and its severity gratified the party 
animosity of those who perhaps valued it 
on no other account. At this dista nee of 
time it is read merely as a literary perform- 
ance ; and its merits are fairly estimated 
without scrutinizing the justice of its sa- 
tire, or the motives of its author. 

The fable of this burlesque heroic is co- 
pied from Don Quixote. It consists of the 
adventures of a fictitious knight-errant and 
his squire, who are the representatives of 
the two most prevalent sects among the 

par- 



BUTLER. 239 

parliamentarians, — the presbyterian and in- 
dependent. The knight is described as a 
man of multifarious but whimsical and 
pedantic erudition ; the squire, as a prating 
and dogmatical fanatic ; and both, as deeply 
tinctured with hypocrisy and knavery. The 
piece has less action than conversation. 
The author's talent does not seem to have 
ain in the invention of incident, but he is 
inexhaustible in matter of argument and all 
that relates to opinions. So much learning 
was perhaps never since the days of Rabelais 
applied to a comic purpose. He likewise 
possessed the faculty of bringing together 
the most dissimilar ideas, and linking them 
by odd and fanciful connexions, — the cha- 
racteristic of ludicrous wit. He had, withal, 
a fund of good sense and observation of 
mankind, which gave him a clear percep- 
tion of the ridiculous in manners and cha- 
racter. Besides the leading topics of his 
satire, he has incidentally touched upon 
several other points in which men are de- 
luded by false science or grave imposition ; 

so 



240 LETTER XVII. 

so that he is a writer not only to be laugh- 
ed with, but from whom real instruction is 
to be derived ; and he has furnished a va- 
riety of sentences which, enforced by the 
humorous language in which they arc ex- 
pressed, have passed into proverbial max- 
ims. No one has contributed more than 
he to throw ridicule upon the imposture 
of judicial astrology, which w;w> a folly 
once extremely prevalent, and by no means 
worn out at the period of his writing. 

You will readily conceive that a Avork 
which corresponds to the preceding de- 
scription is not calculated for hasty and 
uninformed readers ; and indeed the learned 
and historical allusions in lludibras are so 
numerous, that they have afforded ample 
matter for the annotations of scholars. It 
will be necessary for you to procure some 
assistance of this kind: nor will I promise, 
after all, that you will enter enough into 
the spirit of the performance to derive much 
pleasure from it. There are defects which 
♦will not fail to strike you. It drags to- 
wards 



GREEN. 241 

wards the conclusion; yet it is an un- 
finished work, nor does it clearly appear 
what the author intended to make of it. 
The personages of the story are so con- 
temptible, that no one cares what is to be- 
come of them. It must also be confessed, 
that the diction and imagery are not free 
from coarseness and vulgarity. Butler has 
been famous for his double rhymes, which 
often, from their oddity, heighten the lu- 
dicrousness of the matter ; yet they are fre- 
quently halting and imperfect, and the style 
and versification in general are careless and 
slovenly. In these respects he is much in- 
ferior to Swift, who, with more ease and 
true familiarity, has also, in his best pieces, 
an air of good company which Butler 
wants. 

I shall direct your attention to one more 
poet of the witty class, who deserves a di- 
stinguished place among original writers, 
though making a small figure in the col- 
lection from the bulk of his productions. 
ThisisGREEx, a modem author, princi- 
R pally 






212 LETTER XYII. 

pally known by his admirable poem on 
" The Spleen." His purpose in this work 
was to suggest the most effectual preserva- 
tives against a foe to human happiness, 
which was a great object of dread half a 
century ago under the name hehas adopted, 
and is not less formidable at present under 
those of low spirits and weak nerves. Like 
a skilful physician, he enumerates the causes 
of this mental disease, and the most potent 
antidotes to their influence ; and he offers 
a remedy for a fit of the spleen in his poem 
itself, made up of a most agreeable com- 
pound of shrewd observation, lively descrip- 
tion, and rational philosophy, seasoned 
with wit and fancy. Butler himself has not 
Hi the same compass more striking assem- 
blages of remote ideas. Green is particu- 
larly happy in allusion, or the application 
of known facts, or passages from authors, 
in a new sense. Thus, recommending ex- 
ercise as a cure for the spleen, lie says, 

Fiing bu'; a stone, the Giant die?. 

News 



GREEN. 243 

News he calls " the manna of a clay ;" 
and speaking of the power of beauty over 
old-age, which " blood long congealed li- 
quefies;" he adds, alluding to the pre- 
tended miracle of St. Januarius's head, 

True miracle, and fairly done 

By heads which are ador'd when on. 

Bis ftietaphors are often exceedingly apt 
and striking. He gives Spleen a magic* 
fen tern, with which she throws frightful 
figures over the scene of life. The precise 
religionists, he says, 

samples of heart-chested grace 

Expose in show-glass of the face. 

Poems are " the hop-grounds of the 
brain ;" and scruple is the " spasm of the 
mind." These images sometimes shoot 
into short allegories, very ingeniously sup- 
ported ; of which the comparison of law to 
a forest, and the voyage of life with which 
the piece concludes, are ( samples. The lat- 
ter is a common idea; but 1 am acquainted 

with 



214 LETTEK XVII. 

>vitli no instance in which it is wrought up 
with so many well-adapted particulars. 

The philosophy of Green is not of the 
exalted kind which lias been adopted by 
some of the moral poets whose works have 
come before you, but which perhaps has 
rather adorned their verse than directed 
their conduct. His is a refined decent epi- 
curism, not however devoid of generous 
principles. He seems to have despaired of 
rendering the world wiser or better, but to 
have aimed at rendering himself so. He 
has sketched the plan of life he desired to 
lead, in a wish, that, of all the poetical 
castle-building I ever met with, appears to 
me the most reasonable. I doubt not, how- 
ever, that in practice, the want of steady 
employment would be found to deduct 
greatly from the imaginary felicity ; and 
that all the other sources of pleasure which 
he so agreeably describes would prove in- 
adequate to repel the intrusions of spleeiu 
As his system is exclusively calculated for 
our sex, I find nothing in it of the pre- 
ceptive 



GREEN. )i\l) 

ceptive kind to recommend to you, except 
that you should endeavour, with him, to 
become one of those votaries of Content- 
ment, 

By happy alchemy of mind, 

Who turn to pleasure all they find. 

Green's other pieces are all worth your 
perusal. " The Sparrow and Diamond " is 
a lively picture of the struggle between 
avarice and tenderness in a female breast. 
The u Seeker," and the poem " On Bar- 
clay's Apology," may half tempt you to 
turn quaker, for which sect the author had 
a manifest partiality. The " Grotto" must 
be at least twice read before it is fully com- 
prehended; but it will repay that labour. 
It is as witty and poetical as his " Spleen," 
though strangely desultory. 

Green ranks among the minor poets ; 
but I confess I would sacrifice many writers 
of whole tomes in the collection rather than 
part with him. 

T<> 



246 LETTER XVII. 

To the triumvirate in this letter I am not 
tempted to make any addition; I there- 
fore close the subject with subscribing 
myself 

Your truly affectionate, &c. 



LETTEK 



fr 247 ] 



LETTER XVlil. 



Having thus, my dear pupil, in a method 
perhaps scarcely perceptible to you, but 
never absent from my own mind, led yo*i 
through all the principal departments oi 
poetical composition, in such manner as 
to afford you a comparative view of the 
productions of the most eminent English 
writers in each, I shall now, without 
further Regard to method, point out to you 
some of those among the remainder who 
appear to me best worthy of your atten- 
tion, and give you my ideas of their pecu- 
liar excellencies. Such an exercise of the 
judgment may spare you much fruitless 
and tiresome reading; for so little selection 
has been employed on the volumes that fill 
your shelves, that a considerable portion 
of them, though dignified with a place 
among those entitled "the English Poets/ 1 

by 



248 LETTER XVIII. 

by way of distinction, are characterized 
only by dull mediocrity, or tasteless rant. 
I do not assert that they contain nothing 
worthy of perusal; but a great passion for 
poetry and abundance of leisure are requi- 
site to compensate the labour of the search. 
It would be unjust to confound with 
such unsuccessful votaries of the Muses, 
Tickell, the friend of Addison, and, in 
some degree, the rival of Pope. Few 
poets of that age equal him in elegance of 
diction and melody of versification ; and 
if he does not display powers of invention 
of the first class, his thoughts generally 
please by their justness and ingenuity. 
None of his pieces are void of some ap- 
propriate merit. The poem " On the Pro- 
spect of Peace" is one of the best of the 
political class : its adulatory strains are not 
trite and vulgar, but expand in an agree- 
able variety of imagery . The " Imitation 
of the Prophecy of Nereus," and the 
" Epistle to a Gentleman at Avignon," 
possess much merit as party poems ; but 

the 



YICKELL. £19 

the union of party and poetry will proba- 
bly afford you little pleasure. " Kensing- 
ton Garden" is a pretty fancy-piece ; not 
correct, indeed, in its mythology, since it 
blends the fiction of the fairy system with 
that of the heathen deities, — but elegant 
and picturesque in its descriptions. 

" Colin and Lucy" you have probably 
met with in song-collections, where it has 
a place as one of the most beautiful of 
modern ballads. The pathetic strain which 
lie has there touched upon in a fictitious 
subject, he has pursued in reality on occa- 
sion of the death of his great friend and 
patron Addison. His elegiac poem on 
this event has perhaps no superior of its 
class in the language, for the justness of its 
sentiments, and the serious dignity of its 
poetry. The picture of the funeral in 
Westminster-abbey, the allusions to the 
moral and literary character of the de- 
ceased, and the strokes of feeling for per- 
sonal loss, have all that stamp of truth, 
which interests beyond the most brilliant 

creations 



250 LETTER XVIII. 

creations of the imagination. I have al- 
ready made a comparison between the exer- 
tions of Milton and of Cowley on a simi- 
lar topic. Notwithstanding their superio- 
rity of fame and genius, I do not hesitate 
to give the preference to this piece of 
Tickell, if it be the province of elegiac 
poetry to touch the heart, rather than to 
amuse the fancy. 

Tickell was probably incapable of reach- 
ing the loftiness of the highest kind of 
lyric poetry, yet his Ci Ode to the Earl of 
Sunderland," on his installation at Wind- 
sor, is a composition of great merit. It 
has, indeed, no daring flights, no rapid 
transitions, no sublime obscurities : it pro- 
ceeds in a clear and even tenor of eleva- 
tion ; and the poet's flame, like that of the 
hero he celebrates, " burns calmly in his 
breast." There is, however, much spirit 
in the description of the knights of former 
times, 



The flow'r of chivalry ! who drew 
With sinew'd arm the stubborn yew, 



Ov 



GARTH. 2.J] 

Or with heav T d jvole-axe clear'd the field, 
Or who in justs and tourneys skill'd, 
Before their ladies' eyes renown'd, 
Threw horse and horseman to the ground. 

A more ingenious comparison can scarce- 
: ly be found, than that between the modern 
knights of the gaiter who have been admit- 
ted on account of civic and pacific merits, 
and the u gentler constellations" placed in 
the heavens by " lettered Greece.' ■ The sen- 
timents of this piece are wise and laudable ; 
and the regularity of the measure suits the 
style and subject. 

I am in doubt whether to recommend 
to your notice a poem once famous, the 
" Dispensary" of Dr. Garth. It rank* 
among the mock-heroic, a species of com- 
position in which an uncommon union of 
wit and poetry is requisite to ensure suc- 
cess. Its subject was of a too confined and 
temporary nature to be long interesting; 
nor indeed, when recent, was it distin- 
guished for humour. There is some good 
serious poetry in it, though unskilfully in- 
troduced. 



252 LETTER XVIII. 

troduced. On the whole, it has not much 
claim to escape the oblivion to which it 
seems hastening. 

About the same period there were two 
dramatic writers of great eminence, Con- 
greve and Row.£ r the first in ; comedy, 
the second in tragedy ; who, besides, ob- 
tained reputation in other kinds of poetry, 
and are received among the English poets. 
Yet they are now little read in that capa- 
city, and only a few of their compositions 
deserve attention. If Dr. Johnson's sen- 
tence be just, that CongreveY miscel- 
laneous pieces " show little wit and little 
virtue," I should be wrong to recommend 
them at all to your perusal ; and indeed 
the little that is good in them is scarcely 
worth the pains of selecting from the bad 
or indifferent. I may, however, just men- 
tion his " Ode on Mrs.. Arabella* Hunt 
singing," which ha& something at least 
very like fine poetry, with a mixture of 
something equally like nonsense. The de- 
scription of Silence personified, with its 

accom- 



C0NGRKVE. 2j3 

accompaniments, is carried much beyond 
the power of the most vigorous concep- 
tion to follow. Try what image you can 
" body forth " from these lines : 

An anticnt sigh he sits upon, 

Whose memory of sound is long since gone. 

And purposely annihilated for his throne. 

A melancholy thought, condens'd to air, 
Slol'n from a lover in despair, 
Like a Chin mantle, serves to wrap 
In fluids folds his visionary shape. 

We have had painters daring enough to 
pourtray Milton's Death, though it had 
" no shape distinguishable in member, 
joint or limb;" but he would be a bolder 
artist who should attempt a figure of Con- 
greve's Silence. 

In his " Elegy on Cynthia weeping and 
not speaking" he indulges his fancy less, 
and more consults the natural expression 
of feeling. That he was well able to ally 
passion with poetry, he has proved by his 
single tragedy of u The Mourning Bride," 

which 



254 LETTER XVIII. 

which presents some fine examples of this 
union. 

Ro we, however, stands at the head of 
our poetical tragedians; and were the drama 
our subject, I should venturesome remarks 
upon tragedy considered as a pbem, which 
might perhaps support a higher estimate of 
his merits than modern taste seems to have 
established. Of his general poetry, his 
" Translation of Ltican's Pharsalia" is the 
most considerable work, and it maintains 
a respectable rank among our metrical ver- 
sions of the classics, it has, however, 
that fault from which poetical translation 
is seldom j?*ee ? -»~£xaggeration ; and this, 
as the original is inclined to extravagance, 
has betrayed him into some whimsica in- 
stances of bombast. He likewise runs in- 
to prolixity: but to transfuse the sense of 
one of the most nervously concise of Latin 
writers into English couplets, is a task of 
so much difficulty, that it claims liberal 
allowance. 

Of his miscellaneous pieces, I can only 

recommend 



HOWE. c 2 J. ') 

recommend to you as excellent, three pas- 
toral ballads, which, for tenderness and 
true simplicity, appear to ine almost un- 
equalled in that kind of composition. " De- 
spairing beside a clear stream" is written in 
a measure which has since become popular 
by being adopted by Shenstone and others* 
In its subject, it may be advantageously 
compared with Prior's a Alexis," which 
it surpasses in natural expression. " The 
Contented Shepherd" very pleasingly per- 
sonates that unambitious character which 
is supposed to mark the true lover, to 
whom the affection of his mistress is more 
than all the world besides. The piece 
written on the sickness of the lady address- 
ed in the former, to whom he was after- 
wards united, is exquisitely tender and 
pathetic. These bumble productions place 
Howe higher in my estimation as a poet, 
than his elaborate birth-day odes, and poli- 
tical eulogies ; yd the poem to lord Godol- 
phin upon our military successes is no 
mean performance. 

The 



256 LETTER XVIII. 

The title of " Fables for the Ladies " will 
naturally attract your attention to a work 
of Edward Moore. This author was a 
man of parts and agreeable pleasantry, and 
is known as well by his periodical paper 
" The World," as by his poems, and plays 
of " The Foundling " and " The Gamester." 
His " Fables " are written in an easy familiar 
style, and possess considerable merit, both 
moral and descriptive. Most of them, indeed, 
have the fault so common in this species 
of fiction, — that of neglecting the proper 
nature and manners of the animals intro- 
duced, and making them mere human 
creatures in a brutal form. Who can yield 
a momentary assent to such a supposition 
as that of a leopardess courted by a monkey, 
fox, and goat ; or of a ewe-lamb married 
to a wolf? The prefaces to the fables are 
often sprightly and elegant moral lessons, 
which derive little additional force from 
the subsequent fictions. Such is that against 
neglect of neatness, beginning 

Why, 



EDWARD MOORE. BROOKE. 257 

Why, Caelia, is your spreading waist 
So loose, so negligently lae'd ? 

that against affectation ; 

I hate the face, however fair, 
That carries an affected air: 

and that which describes 

The nymph who walks the public streets, 
And sets her cap at all she meets. 

It will be an useful task to commit these 
short pieces to memory, as mementos for 
the regulation of conduct in what the 
French call les petites morales, and which 
are by no means of trifling importance to 
your sex. 

The three concluding pieces, written by 
Henry Brooke, author of " The Fool of 
Quality," rise much beyond the rest in 
point of poetry. They have not, indeed, 
much of the character of fable, for which 
species of composition they are too long, 
and superabundant in sentiment in pro- 
portion to the narrative ; but they are de- 
lightful as moral tales. The description of 
s conjugal 



§58 LETTER XVIII. 

conjugal affection in the " Sparrow and 
Dove" is charming ; and the fall of inno- 
cence and its recovery in the lc Female 
Seducers" is both highly poetical and 
sweetly pathetic. The address of Virtue 
to the " little trembler" is particularly 
striking, and partakes of the sublime. 

The poems of J.ord Litttblton may 
be recommended to you, as certain to 
a fiord some pleasure, and free from every 
thing that can ofiend; Elegance of lan- 
guage, delicacy and propriety of senti- 
ment, and an even tenor of correct versi- 
fication^ are their characteristics. These 
are qualities, indeed, to be found in many 
of the poets of a refined age, and of them- 
selves are insufficient to raise a writer to 
distinction; but Lyttelton has some pecu- 
liar claims to notice, especially from the 
foir vsex. He appears to have felt the ten- 
der passion with equal ardour and purity, 
and to have fulfilled every duty both of a 
lover and a husband. In the former capa- 
city his most considerable production is 

" The 



LORD LYTTET/TOX. 2.39 

<6 The Progress of Love" in four eclogues. 
Of this, Dr. Johnson thinks it sufficient 

to say that " it is a pastoral-" which title, 
in Ii is estimation, implied affectation and 
insipidity. I do not think it the better for 
the mixture of pastoral fiction, which is 
supported only by the trite language and 
imagery of rural life; but one who has 
felt love will probably give the author the 
credit of having entered with success into 
the various turns of that passion. His 
u Songs n and oilier short poems are agree- 
able displays of that tender affection which 
at length rendered him happy in a well- 
sorted connubial union ; as his "Monody** 
is the expression of those sentiments of 
past felicity and present grief which suc- 
ceeded the untimely dissolution of that tie. 
This piece, however, is rather an eloquent 
enumeration of topics of praise and re- 
gret, than the artless effusion of uncon- 
trolled emotions: yet there are some 
Strokes of natural and pathetic lamentation 
which cannot fail to excite sympathy. 

Lord 



£60 LETTER XVI 11. 

Lord Lyttelton has shown his friendship 
for the fair-sex by an epistle of " Advice," 
which, notwithstanding the ridicule be- 
stowed upon it by lady Mary Wortley Mon- 
tague, may be read with pleasure and ad- 
vantage. Though a very young adviser 
at that time, he displays no inconsiderable 
knowledge of character and manners. I 
must, however, enter a protest against the 
following maxim : 

One only care your gentle breasts should move, 
TV important business of your life is love. 

Unless love be here used in the extend?- 
ed sense of all the charities of life, all that 
is endearing and attaching in human so- 
ciety, I should say that he degrades the 
female character by his limitation. 

I have been in some doubt whether to 
desire you to take up again the volumes of 
Siienstone. You will find in him no- 
thing equal to his " School-mistress;" no- 
thing, indeed, which has not some marks 
of feebleness and mediocrity : yet he has atr 

tained 



SHENSTOKE. 2( ) I 

gained a degree of popularity which may be 
admitted as proof of merit of a certain 
kind, and as a reason against total neglect. 
You will scarcely, I think, overcome the 
languor of his long elegies, notwithstand- 
ing their melodious flow and occasional 
beauties. A life spent in dissatisfaction 
with himself and his situation, in sickly 
gloom and unrelished leisure, was not like- 
ly to inspire vigorous strains ; and the ele- 
giac tone assumes deep and fixed despon- 
dence in the effusions of his imagination. 
The last of these pieces, in which he de- 
plores the consequences of a licentious 
amour, has been generally admired. It 
touches upon the true pathetic, though 
mingled with the fanciful. 

The " Pastoral Ballad" in four parts is 
probably the most popular of all his pro- 
ductions. Many persons, I believe, sup- 
pose both the measure and the manner to be 
of Shcnstone's invention ; but I have point- 
ed out a better specimen of both in Rowe. 
Simplicity of language and sentiment was 

the 



262 letter xym. 

the writer's aim ; it is, however, no easy 
thing to attain the grace of this quality, 
without bordering upon its next neigh- 
bour, inanity. Shenstone has not been able 
entirely to hit this point : yet he has seve- 
ral strokes of natural and tender feeling, as 
well as passages of pleasing rural imagery, 
which he drew from original sources. 

His poem entitled "Kunil Elegance" is 
worth reading on account of its descrip- 
tions of the modern art of landscape gar- 
dening, of which lie was an early and di- 
stinguished practitioner. The following 
lines are a very picturesque sketch of the 
principal operations of that art : 

Whether we fringe the sloping hill, 
Or smooth below the verdant mead, 
Whether we break the falling rill, 
Or through meand'ring mazes lead, 
Or in the horrid bramble's room 
Bid careless groups of roses bloom, 
Or let some shelter'd lake serene 
•Reflect flow'rs, woods, and spires, and brighten all the 
scene. 

The « Dying Kid," the « Ballad of 

Nancy 



SHENSTONE. 263 

Nancy of the Vale," and some of the songs, 
which arc tender and delicate in their sen- 
timent, have afforded pleasure to readers 
who are not too fastidious in their ideas of 
excellence. I believe they will do so to 
you ; nor do I wish to foster in you that 
sickly nicety of taste, which refuses to be 
pleased with what is really beautiful, be- 
cause it is not presented in the most per- 
fect form. 

Adieu! 



LETTKtt 



I 2M I 



LETTER XIX. 



My task now, my dear Mary, draws to a 
conclusion; for although, since the time 
of Shenstone, several poets have appeared 
who have enjoyed their day of reputation, 
and have been consigned to posterity in the 
volumes of collections, yet lew of them 
have survived even this short interval in the' 
voice of popular fame. I have one, how- 
ever, to mention who may be considered as 
fully established in his seat among the most 
eminent of the poetical fraternity, and 
whose works are as much consecrated by 
the stamp of public applause as if they had 
received the approbation of centuries. This 
is Goldsmith, one of the minor poets, 
with regard to the bulk of his productions, 
but perhaps the immediate successor of 
Dryden and Pope, if estimated by their 
excellence. 

His 



GOLDSMITH. 263 

His two principal pieces, " The Travel* 
ler" and " The Deserted Village," come 
under tlue head of descriptive poems ; but 
the description is so blended with sen- 
timent, and so pointed and consolidated 
by a moral design, that they claim a higher 
place than is usually allotted to that class 
of compositions. It is true, Goldsmith 
was more of a poet than of a philosopher 
or politician ; and therefore it is rather for 
the entertainment than the instruction that 
they afford, that these performances are to 
be valued ; yet there is much in them to 
warm the heart as well as to delight the 
imagination. 

It is not derogatory to the merit of 
Goldsmith's poetry that it is calculated to 
please the general taste. The qualities by 
which it effects this purpose are, remarka- 
ble clearness and perspicuity of style ; a na* 
tural unaffected diction that rejects every 
artifice of speech which has been employed 
to force up language into poetry by re- 
moteness from common use; and a warmth, 

energy, 



266 LETTER XIX. 

energy, and variety, which never suffer the 
attention to languish. His imagery is all 
taken from human life and natural objects; 
and though frequently new to the gene- 
rality of readers, is easily comprehended. 
His sentiments, if not always accurately 
just, are such as obtain ready admission, 
and find something correspondent in every 
breast. The nervous conciseness with 
which they are expressed imprints them on 
the memory, while the melodious How of 
his verse gratifies the ear, and aids the 
impression. 

The poem of " The Traveller" consists 
of a descriptive sketch of various European 
countries, with the manners and charac- 
ters of the inhabitants, drawn by the au- 
thor on the spot, for the moral purpose of 
contrasting their advantages and disadvan- 
tages, and deducing the general maxim, 
that the former are balanced by the latter, 
and that the sum of happiness does not 
greatly differ in any. Whatever be thought 
of the truth of this proposition, it must be 

acknowledged 



GOLDSMITH. #G7 

acknowledged that national pictures Mere 
never before drawn with so much force and 
beauty ; and the reader is at a loss whether 
most to admire the representations of visi- 
ble nature presented to his fancy, or the 
moral portraitures addressed to his under- 
standing. The different figures are also 
happily placed for the effect of constrast ; 
the hardy Swiss after the effeminate Italian, 
rind (lie phlegmatic Hollander after the vo- 
latile Frenchman. As the writer generally 
adheres closely to his topic, he has intro- 
duced few adventitious ornaments ; but such 
as he has employed are in good taste : his 
similes in this and the companion piece 
are eminently beautiful. 

The " Deserted Village" is the enlarge- 
ment of a topic just touched upon at the 
close of the preceding poem ; the supposed 
depopulation of the country in consequence 
of the encroachments of luxurious opu- 
lence. The writer imagines a village, which 
from infancy he had known happy in all 
the humble charms and pleasures of rural 

life, 



2G8 LETTER XIX. 

life, delivered at length to the hand of do* 
solation under the sway of a single un- 
feeling master, while its former inhabitants 
are driven to exile in transatlantic emigra- 
tion. It is in the contrast between these 
two states of prosperity and desertion that 
the descriptive part of the poem consists ; 
and the design affords much scope both for 
the picturesque and the pathetic. Views 
of rural life are indeed among the com- 
monest products of poetry, and it was dif- 
ficult to avoid the beaten track of imitation 
in treating such a subject. But Goldsmith 
wisely drew from the sources of his own 
observation. He did not go to a fancied 
Arcadia for the draught of an English vil- 
lage, but made a copy of the reality, warm 
from the life, and coloured with the vivid 
tints of a truly poetical imagination. Every 
circumstance is selected with the taste and 
feeling of one who was thoroughly ac- 
quainted with the effect of his art. What 
an interesting picture (if we may so call it) 
has lie composed of sounds^ where he de- 
scribes 



GOLDSMITH. 2GJ) 

scribes the " village murmur" striking with 
softened tones upon the distant ear, and 
conveying notices of all the various busi- 
ness going on among the human and ani* 
mal inhabitants ! 

The swain responsive as the milkmaid sung, 

The sober herd that low'd to meet their young, 

The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool, 

The playful children just let loose from school, 

The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering wind, 

And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind. 

His internal view of the village, with its 
principal personages, the clergyman and 
schoolmaster, is admirably drawn. The 
portrait of the former may vie in dignity 
and interest with Dryden's Country Par- 
son ; and though they are so similar in 
subject and effect, Goldsmith's exhibits no 
marks of imitation, but is perfectly ori- 
ginal. The schoolmaster is a comic paint- 
ing, but extremely natural, and free from 
caricature. The same^nay be said of the 
alehouse, with its furniture and company; 
and good-nature will excuse the indul- 



270 v LETTER XIX. 

gence with which the enjoyments of the 
poor are treated, even when verging to ex- 
cess. It is, indeed, to the credit of Gold- 
smith's heart, that he always appears the 
poor man's friend ; and the erroneous no- 
tions which he has adopted on some points, 
were probably suggested by the keen in- 
dignation lie felt against those hardened 
sons of wealth and ease, who seem to 
grudge their inferiors any share of those 
pleasures in which they themselves revel 
without control. The pictures of the 
ruined and forsaken female, and of the 
grotip taking a last farewell of their be- 
loved village, are beautiful touches of the 
pathetic. On the whole, this poem is one 
of those which take possession of the heart 
and imagination with irresistible stray, and 
can scarcely satiate by repeated perusal. 

The other pieces of Goldsmith are trifles, 
but such as denote the man of original 
genius. " The Haunch of Venison" and 
" Retaliation" are humorous productions, 
in which the familiar style is very happily- 
employed. 



GOLDSMITH. 271 

employed. Tlic latter pleasantly exhibits 
the author's talent at drawing' characters. 
The light satire in some of these sketches 
is seasoned with good-humoured praise, 
so as to make up a very palatable com- 
pound to the persons concerned ; with the 
exception of Garrick, whose foibles are 
drawn with too much force to be obli- 
terated by commendation. Accordingly, 
it provoked a more severe though less 
witty retort from the great actor. 

The " Hermit'' is a specimen of the 
ballad, divested of that rusticity which is 
its usual character, yet preserving an ele- 
gant and cultured simplicity. The story 
is not a good one; but there are many 
pleasing passages in the piece, and the 
moral sentiments are expressed with great 
neatness. That it lias none of the trivial 
phrases and insipid repetitious of the an- 
tient ballads, will be objected to it only by 
those whoso taste is vitiated by antiquarian 
pedantry. 

Of the remaining compositions I shall 

not ice 



272 LETTER XIX. 

notice only one, and that for the purpose 
of showing the power of versification alone 
in giving the grace of poetry to a simple 
sentiment, unadorned by any of those 
flowers of diction which some suppose es- 
sential to the poetical character. Plainer 
words cannot be found than those which 
compose the following " Stanzas on Wo- 
man." 

When lovely Woman stoops to folly, 

And finds too late that men betray,. 
What charm can sooth her melancholy, 

What art can wash her guilt away ? 

The only art her guilt to cover, 

To hide her shame from every eye, 
To give repentance to her lover, 

And wring his bosom, is — to die. 

I confess, however, they have to me a 
charm beyond that of almost any piece of 
the kind with which I am acquainted. 
This effect is, doubtless, partly owing to 
the pathos of the sentiment itself, and the 
skill with which it is wrought to a point. 
But surely the melodious flow of the lines, 

joined 



johnso^. 273 

joined with the recurrence of agreeable 
sounds in the double rhymes, operates as 
a powerful auxiliary to the sense. Many 
of the best songs in our language, and 
almost all those of the French, turn in 
like manner upon a single striking thought, 
expressed with simple conciseness, in ele- 
gant versification. 

An example of what may be done by 
strong sense, learning, and cultivated taste 
towards producing valuable poetry, without 
a truly poetical genius, is afforded by seve- 
ral pieces in verse of the celebrated Dr* 
Samuel Johnson, whose great name in 
literature has been acquired by his prose 
compositions. The walk in which a writer 
so qualified is most likely to succeed, is 
that of the morally didactic . Energy of lan- 
guage, vigour and compass of thought, and 
correctness of versification, are the principal 
requisites for the moral poet ; and few 
have possessed them in a higher degree than 
the author in question. 

His imitations of two satires of Juvenal, 
t under 



274 LETTER XIX. 

under the title of " London;' and " The 
Vanity of Human Wishes/' are, perhaps, 
the most manly compositions of the kind 
in our language. The Roman poet is di- 
stinguished by the earnest and pointed seve- 
rity of his invective, as well as by the force 
of his painting, and the loftiness of his 
philosophy ; and the imitation does not 
fall short of the original in these respects? 
whilst it is free from its grossness and im- 
purity. The " London" indeed, written 
in the earlier part of Johnson's literary 
career, while he was a warm oppositionist 
in politics, and had scarcely acquired that 
confirmed relish for the metropolis which 
afterwards characterized him, has a con- 
siderable mixture of coarse exaggeration. 
The other piece possesses more calm dig- 
nity; and the examples drawn from mo- 
dern history to parallel those from antient 
history in the original, are, for the most 
part, well chosen. That of Charles of 
Sweden is written with peculiar animation. 
The conclusion j which is sublime in the 

Latin* 



johnson. 275 

Latin, is as much more so in the English, 
as the theology of the modern writer was 
superior to that of the antient. Nobler 
lines than the following were never com- 
posed.*: 

Yet when the sense of sacred presence fires. 
And strong devotion to the skies aspires, 
Pour forth thy fervours for a healthful mind, 
Obedient passions, and a will resign'd j 
For love, which scarce collective man can fill, 
For patience, sovereign o'er transmuted ill ; 
For faith, that panting for a happier seat, 
Counts death kind nature's signal for retreat. 

Both these imitations have an excellence 
to an English reader not always found in 
compositions of this class — that of being 
complete in themselves, and not depend- 
ing for their effect upon allusion to the 
originals. 

The same vigour of thought and style 
has made Johnson the author of the finest 
prologue our language can boast, with the 
exception, perhaps, of Pope's to Cato. 
It was written on the occasion of opening 

the 



276 LETTER XIX. 

the Drury-Iane theatre in 1747, and was 
meant to usher in that better choice of 
plays which took place under the manage- 
ment of his friend Garrick. The sketch 
of the vicissitudes of the English xlrama 
is drawn with justness and spirit, and the 
concluding appeal to the good-sense and 
taste of the audience is truly dignified. 
Another prologue, to the benefit-play 
given to Milton's grand-daughter, is like- 
wise much superior to the ordinary strain 
of these compositions. 

The Odes of Johnson have, I think, the 
same air of study, the same frigid ele- 
gance, which he has derided in those of 
Akenside. The sublimer flights of the 
lyric muse he has judiciously not attempt- 
ed, conscious of his want of enthusiasm ; 
his want of gaiety equally unfitted him 
for her sprightly strains. The pieces de- 
nominated from the four seasons of the 
year have little characteristic painting : he 
was, indeed, precluded by corporeal de- 
fects from any lively perception of the 

imagery 



JOHNSON. 277 

imagery of rural nature. The translation 
of Anacreon's "Dove" is, however, very 
happily executed. Cowley would have 
done it with scarcely more ease, and with 
less elegance. 

There is one piece, written, too, at an 
advanced age, which may be produced as 
an example of perfection in its kind — I 
allude to the stanzas on the death of Levett. 
I know not the poem of equal length in 
which it would be so difficult to change a 
single line, or even word, for the better. 
The subject supplied matter neither for 
sublimity nor pathos : the mature decease 
of a man in obscure life, and with no other 
quality than humble utility, was to be re- 
corded ; and who but Johnson could have 
filled such a meagre outline with such ad- 
mirable finishing ? Every line is a trait of 
character or sentiment. What a picture 
of life is given in the following stanza! 

In misery's darkest caverns known, 

His useful rare a\ps ever nigh, 
Where hopeless anguish pourM his grcan, 

And lonely want rcth'd to die. 

1 confess, 



278 letter xix:. 

I confess, that much as I admire the 
flights of a poetical imagination, it is these 
sober serious strains to which at present I 
recur with most delight. Your taste may 
reasonably be different; yet I trust in the 
solidity of your understanding to lead you 
to set a just value upon that verse, which, 
while it gratifies the ear, also touches and 
meliorates the heart. 

Farewell ! 



LETTER 



[ 279 ] 



LETTER XX- 

I am tempted, my dear Mary, for the sub- 
ject of a concluding letter, to desert the 
collection in which we have been so long 
immersed, and direct your notice to two 
very modern poets, whose reputation, now 
sealed by death, justly recommends them 
to every lover of the Muses: these are 
Beattie and Cowper. 

The " Minstrel" of the former, his prin- 
cipal performance, is a fancy-piece, the 
theme of which is the supposed birth and 
education of a poet. The name of Minstrel 
is not very happily applied; since the cha- 
racter described widely differs from that 
musical songster of a rude age ; nor can 
we find any " Gothic days" which suit the 
circumstances of the tale. In fact, the au- 
thor's plan is crude and incongruous ; and 
the chief value of his performance consists 

in 



280 LETTER XX. 

in descriptions and sentiments addressed to 
the feelings of all who have a perception 
of natural and moral beauty, apart from 
any particular appropriation. There is, how- 
ever, something very pleasing in the por- 
trait of his Edwin, who was " no vulgar 
boy," but is represented as marked from 
his cradle with those dispositions and pro- 
pensities which were to be the foundation 
of his future destiny. I believe it would be 
difficult in real biography to trace any such 
early indications of a genius exclusively 
fitted for poetry ; nor do I imagine that an 
exquisite sensibility to the sublime and 
beautilul of nature is ever to be found in 
minds which have not been opened by a 
degree of culture. Yet there is a seeming 
probability in the contrary supposition, 
which may very well serve the purpose of 
fiction, and it leads to some beautiful de- 
scription of natural scenery. 

The measure chosen by Beattie is the 
stanza of Spenser, which he manages with 
great address and seeming ease. Its Gothic , 



BEATTIE. 281 

origin arc pomp of sound are the reasons 
he gives for adopting it. I have little doubt, 
however, that its employment by Thom- 
son in his Castle of Indolence principally 
suggested it to him, for many of his strains 
closely resemble those of that work. 

Among his landscape-paintings, one of 
the most novel is that of a misty day view- 
ed from an eminence : 

And oft the craggy cliff he lov'd to climb, 
When all in mist the world below was lost. 
What dreadful pleasure ! there to stand sublime, 
Like shipwrecked mariner on desert coast, 
And view th' enormous waste of vapour, tost 
In billows, length'ning to th' horizon round, 
Now scoop'd in gulfs, with mountains now emboss'd ! 
And hear the voice of mirth and song rebound, 
Flocks, herds, and waterfalls, along the hoar profound * 

His description of " the melodies of 
morn" is a delineation of sounds which 
may be compared with that already quoted 
from Goldsmith. The subsequent fairy vi- 
vsi'>n, though painted with much beauty, is 
too splendid and artificial for the fancy of 

an 



§82 LETTER XX. 

an untutored youth, who, without being 
conversant in books, could form no con- 
ceptions of that kind. It may also be re- 
marked, that Edwin is too early made a 
philosophic reasoner : but Beattie was im- 
patient for occasions to express his detes- 
tation of " Pyrrho's maze and Epicurus' 
sty," so that he has anticipated in jjis first 
book what properly belongs to the second. 
Of the first, it is the business to feed young 
Edwin's fancy, and lay in stores for poetical 
imagery ; he is therefore rightly represented 
as delighting not only in all the grand and 
striking scenes of nature, but in every spe- 
cies of fiction which awakens the curiosity 
and interests the feelings. He has also that 
love for solitude and disposition to melan- 
choly which are usually supposed the at- 
tendants of genius. To these are added a 
taste for music : 

The wild harp rang to his adventurous hand, 
And languished to his breath the plaintive flute. 

Of this connexion between music pro- 
perly 



BEATTIE. 283 

perly so called, and the music of verse, I 
have already more than once expressed my 
doubts ; yet it is an idea in which the mind 
readily acquiesces. 

At the opening of the second book an 
education of the young poet commences, 
the reverse of the former ; for fancy is now 
to be corrected and controlled by truth. 
" Perish the lay that deadens young desire" 
is no more the maxim of the instructor, 
and the youth is to be taught that hopes 
are made to be disappointed, and that what 
seems good in the world is not really so. 
The manner in which this change is brought 
about, it must be confessed, does no credit 
to the author's invention. Edwin strays to 
a lonely valley (beautifully described), in 
which resides that convenient personage, a 
hermit. Him he over-hears telling him- 
self his own story in a long soliloquy, in 
which the vanity of worldly pursuits, and 
the vices that haunt the public scenes of 
life, are displayed. Edwin is shocked at 
the recital, and an uneasiness takes pos- 
session 



284 LETTER XX. 

session of his breast which can only be dis- 
pelled by a conference with the sage. At a 
second visit he ventures to introduce him- 
self, and the hermit is so pleased with his 
ingenuous temper, that he adopts him as a 
pupil. The business is now in a right train ; 
for although the scene is laid in Gothic 
times, it is easy to invest the solitary with 
all the wisdom and all the knowledge that 
books and contemplation can supply. The 
course of instruction through which the 
pupil is led does honour to the writer, and 
proves that his mind was well stored and 
cultivated. First, " the muse of history 
unrolls her page," and many excellent ob- 
servations are deduced from her lessons. 
Philosophy next succeeds, accompanied by 
Science : 

And Reason now through Number, Time, and Space, 

Darts the keen lustre of her serious eye, 

And learns, from facts compared, the laws to trace, 

Whose long progression leads to Deity. 

Can mortal strength presume to soar so high ! 

Can mortal sight, so oft bedimm'd with tears, 

Such glory bear !— - for lo, the shadows fly 

From 



BEATTIE. 285 

From nature's face; confusion disappears, 
And order charms the eyes, and harmony the ears. 

These fine lines are succeeded by strains 
equalled elevated, in which the progress of 
the youthful mind to knowledge, virtue, 
and refinement, is beautifully developed. 
But when the accumulated stores are to 
be applied to the purpose of forming the 
finished poet, the work abruptly concludes 
with the pathetic lamentation of a lost 
friend; and we are led to suppose that the 
sudden stroke overwhelmed the poet's pow- 
ers, and extinguished his flame. Probably, 
however, he had proceeded as far as he saw 
tire way clear before him, and felt that pur- 
suing the theme further would involve him 
in difficulties which he was afraid of en- 
countering. 

From the freedom with which I have 
commented upon the plan of this poem, 
you will perhaps wonder that I have se- 
lected it as an object of particular recom- 
mendation; but there is so much genuine 
poetry and so much excellent moral in the 

detail, 



288 LETTER XX. 

detail, that I am convinced you will find 
your attention well employed in the per- 
usal. 

The great popularity which the name of 
Cowper has obtained is a sufficient testi- 
mony to the merit of his productions, which 
were so far from appearing with any pecu- 
liar advantages, that his first publication 
had nearly sunk under the dislike attached 
to a narrow and gloomy system of religion. 
The lamented author passed his life in an 
obscure retreat from the world, doubly 
darkened by the shades of a morbid me- 
lancholy ; and nothing could have forced 
him upon the public view but a blaze of 
genius not to [be repressed by unfortunate 
circumstances. His works are now become 
an inseparable part of the mass of approved 
English poetry, and they could not fail to 
engage your notice without any care of 
mine to point them out. I cannot hesitate, 
therefore, to include among the subjects of 
my observations, an author who sooner or 
later must come into your hands, and has 



cowper. 237 

so good a claim to the reputation he has 
acquired. 

The pieces principally composing the first 
volume of Cowper's poems are arranged 
under the heads of Error, Truth, Expostu- 
lation, Hope, Charity, Conversation, and 
Retirement. These topics are treated in a 
familiar and desultory manner, with a con- 
tinual reference to those religious principles 
which are commonly termed methodistical; 
and a vein of severe rebuke runs through 
them, which the author himself afterwards 
admitted to be too acrimonious. Yet in 
the midst of his doctrinal austerity, a truly 
benevolent heart is perpetually displaying 
itself, joined with a noble spirit of free- 
dom and independence. Keen and saga- 
cious reflexions upon life and manners, and 
frequent sallies of genuine humour, are 
interspersed, which must be relished by 
readers who are no friends to his system 
of divinity : yet even the latter in many in- 
stances stands apart from peculiar doctrines, 

and 



288 LETTER XX. 

and presents only sentiments of pure and 
exalted piety. 

The verse is heroic couplet, generally of 
a loose and careless structure, and the dic- 
tion is for the most part simple and pro- 
saic. There are, however, strains of poetry 
wrought with care, and glowing with the 
fervour of genius. An air of originality 
pervades the whole ; and though well ac- 
quainted with classical literature, no writer 
is less of a borrower. All the pieces under 
the enumerated heads will amply repay the 
perusal : but you will perhaps find most to 
please you in those of Charity, Conversa- 
tion, and Retirement. In the first of these 
are some admirably energetic lines against 
the slave trade, which was an object of his 
rooted abhorrence. The " Altar of Liberty" 
is a fine fancy-piece; and the idea of ve- 
nerating the Power by what may be called 
the anti-sacrifice of letting fly " A captive 
bird into the boundless sky," is a most hap- 
py conception. 

" Con- 



COWPER. 2S9 

u Conversation" abounds with excellent 
sense and humour. You will be diverted 
with the picture of the formal visiting party, 
where, 

The circle formed, we. sit in silent state, 
Like figures drawn upon a dial-plate; 

and from which. 

The visit paid, with ecstasy we come, 

As from a seven years' transportation, home. 

Of the serious parts, you will, doubtless, 
distinguish the Disciples at Emmaus, as a 
story told with the grace of true simpli- 
city. 

The exquisite representations of the Me- 
lancholy Man, in "Retirement" were too 
faithful copies of what the writer saw and 
felt in himself. How poetical, and how 
touching, are the following lines ! 

Then, neither heathy wilds, nor scenes as fair 
As ever recompensed the peasant^ care, 
Not soft declivities with tufted hills, 
Nor view of waters turning husy mills; 
Parks in which art preceptress nature weds, 
Nor gardens interspers'd with flow'ry beds, 
v 



290 LETTER XX. 

Nor gales that catch the scent of blooming groves, 

And waft it to the mourner as he roves, 

Can call up life into his faded eye, 

That passes all he sees unheeded by: 

No wounds like those a wounded spirit feels, 

No cure for such, till God who makes them, heals, 

These pieces, as I have before hinted, 
were little known or noticed, till the ap- 
pearance of the second volume of Cowper's 
poems, chiefly occupied by " The Task." 
This production seemed instantly to cap- 
tivate the public favour, and the fame of 
the new poet \m\yid\y spread throughout the 
kingdom. Perhaps no poetical work un- 
connected with temporary topics ever ac- 
quired more readers in an equal period. It 
is a composition in every respect unique. 
From a task of writing verses upon a sofa, 
sportively set by a lady, it has swelled to a 
poem of five books, each distinguished by 
a separate title, but unrestricted to subject 
or method. The matter consists of de- 
scription, chiefly rural, intermixed with 
moral and religious sentiment, and por- 
traitures 



COWPER. 2 f :)l 

tmiturcs of life and manners, altogether 

forming a varied tissue, of no certain pat- 
tern or design, but extremely rich in ori- 
ginal thoughts and poetical beauties. The 
writer's theological tenets and satirical vein 
are sufficiently manifest throughout the 
work, but they appear more softened than 
in the former volume. 

The delineations of natural objects in the 
"Task" are all copied with great accuracy 
from nature, and finished with minute de- 
licncy. They would resemble the Dutch 
style of painting, did not the writer's ele- 
gance of taste generally lead him to select 
only such objects as are capable of pleasing 
or picturesque effect. The circumstance* 
and appendages are often, indeed, little in 
themselves, but they wonderfully contri- 
bute to the truth and liveliness of the 
draughts. The picture of the woodman 
and his dog, which has been happily trans- 
ferred to the canvas, may be taken for an 
example of his manner. 

The "Task" is judiciously composed 

in 



292 LETTER XX. 

in blank verse, the freedom of which coin- 
cides with the unlimited range of the mat- 
ter, and the familiarity of the diction. The 
modulation is generally careless and un- 
studied ; but where he thought it worth 
his while, he has shown himself a master 
of the melody of which this species of ver- 
sification is susceptible. The Language may 
sometimes appear below the poetical stan- 
dard; but he was such a foe to affectation 
in any shape, that he seems to have avoid- 
ed nothing so much as the stiff pomposity 
so common to blank verse writers. That 
he was capable of any degree of elegance 
and true elevation, he has proved by nume- 
rous instances where the subject demanded 
those qualities. The particular passages 
in the several books which deserve to be 
dwelt upon are so numerous, that I shall 
not attempt to point them out, but leave to 
you the pleasing task of marking such as 
suit your own taste; and I doubt not that, 
in the course of frequent perusals, you will 
Suffer none of the beauties to escape you. 

There 



cowper. 293 

There arc not many examples of the exer- 
cise of those higher powers of the fancy 
which invent and create ; yet his personifi- 
cation of Winter in the 4th book may be 
cited as one of the most poetical and well- 
wrought fictions of the kind. The idea of 
seating him upon a sledge-chariot, driven 
over the ice by storms, is beautifully grand. 
The allegory of Discipline is admirable, 
but can scarcely be called a formation of 
the fancy, since his figure and ministration 
are entirely human. 

The miscellaneous pieces which contri- 
bute to fill the two volumes are all possessed 
of some appropriate merit, and display the 
versatile talents of the author. Who has 
not laughed over John Gilpin, or sympa- 
thized with Selkirk? The most important 
of these detached pieces is " Tirocinium, or 
a Review of Schools," which a parent can- 
not read without many serious reflexions. 
These will not at present much interest 
you, but you will be touched with the 
pathetic address to the father just on the 

point 



g$t LETTER XX. 

point of sending his son to a public 
school : 

Now look on him, whose very voice in tone 
Just echoes thine, whose features are thine own, 
-And stroke his polish'd cheek of purest red, 
And lay thine hand upon his flaxen head, 
j\nd say — My boy, th' unwelcome hour is come, 
When thou, tranplanted from thy genial home, 
Must find a colder Foil and bleaker air, 
And trust for safety to a stranger's care. 

It is in such domestic pictures of the 
tender kind that Cowper is inimitable! 

If you wish to feel the full force of the 
simple pathetic, raised by no other art 
than the selection of little circumstances, 
which could only have suggested them- 
selves to an exquisitely sensible heart , you 
must turn to the piece which has lately ap- 
peared in his "Life by Hay ley," addressed 
to the beloved companion of so many years, 
his Mary, now reduced to second infancy. 
All the studied elegies and monodies that 
were ever written are poor in effect to this 
effusion. 

I will 



HEXRY MOORE. 233 

I i»UI not close my letter without re- 
commending to your notice a still later 
poetical publication, although I may incur 
some suspicion of partiality in so doing, 
on account of the relation in which I stand 
towards it as editor : it was, however, sole- 
ly from an impression of its excellence that 
I was induced to undertake this office, the 
worthy author being totally unknown to 
me. This is the " Poems Lyrical and Mis- 
cellaneous of the late Reverend Henry" 
Moore." They will not, perhaps, rank 
among the more original compositions in 
the language ; but J am mistaken if they 
will not maintain a permanent place among 
the most splendid, the most melodious, 
the most elevated in sentiment and diction. 
The versification of the Odes is perhaps 
too void of regularity, but it abounds in 
strains exquisitely musical, and often hap- 
pily adapted to the subject. The imagery 
is singularly grand, elegant, and rich, and 
both the sublime and the pathetic are 
touched with a master hand. Above all, 

these 



f96 LETTER XX. 

these pieces are characterized by that ex- 
pansive glow of benevolence, that ardour of 
pure and rational devotion, which, when 
allied to genuine poetry, exert the noblest 
influence on the soul. 

I have now, my dear young friend, com- 
pleted my original design of pointing out 
to you such a course of reading in the En- 
glish Poets as might at the same time con- 
tribute to form your literary taste, and pro- 
vide you with a fund of rational and ex- 
alted entertainment. Of the value of such 
a lasting and easily procurable source of 
pleasure, 1 can speak from my own expe- 
rience ; nor do I think it less adapted to 
solace the domestic leisure of a female, than 
to relieve the cares and labours of mascu- 
line occupation. I am also convinced, that 
such an union of moral and religious sen- 
timent with the harmony of numbers and 
the splendour of language, as our best poets 
afford, is of important use in elevating the 
mind, and fortifying it against those trials 
to which the human condition is perpe- 
tually 



CONCLUSION. 297 

tually exposed. Nor are the lighter strains 
without their value in promoting; a harm- 
less gaiety chastised by elegance and re- 
finement. 

That to your other accomplishments you 
may join every advantage of head and heart 
which mental cultivation is capable of im- 
parting, is the sincere wish of 

Your truly affectionate 

J. A. 



THE END. 



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